My First Gooseberry

My First Gooseberry

Posted on by Alice

“There’s no way of eating a gooseberry that isn’t a divine experience.”~Monty Don I love Big Dreams, Small Spaces. I’ve seen it a billion times, but it’s still usually on my TV to keep me company when I’m home alone. (It’s on Netflix, so if you haven’t seen it, you should go watch it!) Everyone is just so cheerfully enthusiastic about gardening, especially the host (and “Britain’s favorite gardener”), Monty Don. There’s a moment in the first episode of the second season where Monty in trying to convince his garden mentee to buy a gooseberry as he gets really excited Read More

What I'm Growing From Seed in 2019 (Vegetables)

What I’m Growing From Seed in 2019 (Vegetables)

Posted on by Alice

A lot.  I’m growing a lot from seed this year. Last year, I tried so so so hard to limit the varieties of vegetable and flowers I grew from seed because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself and end up with nothing but failure.  I would say I was pretty successful in this endeavor.  Because I placed restrictions on myself, I got the chance to experiment with different ways of growing plants and figuring out in what conditions they thrived. I kept it simple which allowed me to become more confident as a gardener.  And finally, managing a smaller amount Read More

How I Made My Grow Light Stand

How I Made My Grow Light Stand

Posted on by Alice

In a perfect world with unlimited funds my gardening adventures would be Instagram worthy all the time.  I like to garden pretty.  You can garden on the cheap, but often that means you sacrifice aesthetics.  There’s nothing wrong with that if it doesn’t bother you.  But for me, it does.  Neat and tidy things please me (I can hear my mother laughing across the country.  She might have a different experience of me…). But here’s my problem.  I don’t have a lot of money. And I don’t have a ton of natural sunlight shinging in any of my windows.  Growing Read More

Update: Earth Day Sapling

Update: Earth Day Sapling

Posted on by Alice

Yeah, so remember the Earth Day sapling I brought home?  You know, the one that I got for free from the grocery store.  The one with the lovely care instructions on the bag that I chose to ignore.  Oh yeah, that one?  What happened to that tree? Complete and utter failure happened. Look at all that brown!  But this outcome was predictable, right?  I completely disregarded the instructions and went for glory right away.  There, of course, is a lesson to be learned here.  Several, in fact. Lesson 1: Be patient. It’s easy as newb gardeners to want to put Read More

Also Introducing...

Also Introducing…

Posted on by Alice

Again, I’m unfashionably late with this announcement.  I spoke yesterday about major life changes, but focused on the moving.  Well, we had another big event in November that warrants some chatter… People, this is Navi! Again, crazy cute!  What puppy isn’t?!? Nick and I knew that we’d eventually get a second dog, but we didn’t think it would happen this soon.  The problem we had is that Kirby is incredibly social.  To the point that him being an only child felt so, so cruel.  Seriously, he was very sad when his puppy friends had to go home!  So I contacted Read More

Let's Have A Do-Over

Let’s Have A Do-Over

Posted on by Alice

New year, new state, new home, new garden.  (And, hopefully, a new effort at blogging.) I’m not normally one for resolutions, but I always enjoy the start of a new year as a point of reflection.  This year, however, felt much more action-oriented than most. Along with my pondering about the year I just had and the year to ahead came some events that really marked the start of this new year as a brand new chapter in my life. One major event is that Nick and I moved to Washington.  The possibility of this move came about around mid-October, Read More

Earth Day Sapling

Earth Day Sapling

Posted on by Alice

Yeah, yeah.  Earth Day was back in April, I know!  But this is something that is still making me smile. I just so happened to stop by our local Rosauers for groceries that day.  When I walked in, they had a big display table set up for Earth Day offering free ponderosa pine saplings.  I have a hard time passing up free stuff anyway (I thought about grabbing two…), but I immediately thought of all my garden beds that need filling.  So I adopted a sapling! Seriously, so cute! So the instructions on the bag (which I composted, thank you Read More

Raised Bed: The Buildening

Raised Bed: The Buildening

Posted on by Alice

Yeah, that photo above showcases some stellar winter weather we were hit with while I was tackling the building part of this project… Anyhoo!  Welcome to the buildening of the raised bed which would not have been possible without a little bit of plannening as described in part one. Assembly Ok, I went into this with every intention of building this bed by myself with no help from Nick.  Why?  I don’t know…ego?  I don’t have much in the way of carpentry experience, but I guess I thought I might be a prodigy.  So I had Nick show me how Read More

Raised Bed: The Plannening

Raised Bed: The Plannening

Posted on by Alice

Another long overdue post coming at ya!  But better late than never, right?  I spent a lot of the winter planning and dreaming about all the growing projects I was going to tackle this summer.  If you’re at all interested in what the heck I was thinking when putting together my raised bed vegetable garden, read on! Design Location: I’m pretty limited as far as location of my raised bed.  And I knew this last year as I was thinking about vegetable gardening while I was laying sod.  There’s really only two spots in my backyard that receive full sun.  Read More

Introducing...

Introducing…

Posted on by Alice

This announcement is very past due, but I want to introduce you to the newest member of the family.   THIS IS KIRBY!!!   Cute, right?!? We did not go into this year expecting to get a puppy.  After Zelda died, the energy in the house wasn’t right.  Part of that was the shock of her sudden passing, but it was also the emptiness of the house.  Nick and I both grew up with dogs, and this was the first time in a long time that both of us had no pets in the home.  (He also had a dog, Read More