The Fruits of My Labor....

I've managed to dig myself out of the garden for the night and hose off....I thought I would share some of my handy work. There is much more to see, and much much more to do, but I hated to take a pic of every little thing I have planted while it's still little, I will show pics of the 'full effect' later this summer.

Here are few pics of the fruits of my labor last fall!!!

The tulips and hyacinth are one of my favorite sights in Spring! Orange tulips are a particular favorite for me, I don't really know why, they just seem to pop and add such a bright splash to the garden! Like biting into a tangy tomato (oooh I can't wait for that! They are growing in my kitchen windows right now! I want the FIRST tomato of the year! LOL!)

Below is the work currently going on around the 'poop tank' as my almost 4 year old refers to it! It doesn't look like much now, but this summer it will be thick with salvia, ornamental grass, foxglove, liriope, my purple leaf sand cherry shrub and whole bunch of other things I have no idea how to pronounce! LOL!

Hopefully in about 4 months I can post before and after pictures and you will see a beautiful display of color and foliage here! And as the years go by my tulips will multiply and make a wonderful spring show each year!

Here are the two shrubs that my mini-van drove me to the greenhouse and forced me to buy! I swear I must have blacked out, I apparently even thought ahead to keep the kids occupied and got them milkshakes at Dairy Queen...or so they tell me.... there were empty cups in the car when I got home so they must be telling truth.

A beautiful bleeding heart and then a plant I had never heard of before but it was called a Metallica something....any plant with the word Metallica in it has to rock right?!! Arf Arf!! Get it!! Lord I crack myself up!!

And the pic below would be the reason I was supposed to stop buying plants a LONG time ago!!! Here are my babies! Grown from seed, roughly 50 petunias, some lobelia, vinca, a few begonia seeds that survived after all (note to self: begonia's are a bitch!) , coleus plants, and more!!! I have five hanging baskets already on display full of sweet pea, nasturtium and lobelia, all started from seed. I did add some store bough pansies. I couldn't wait for some color it there!! I am terribly impatient!!

I know I am getting carried away with these pictures, but I just love my little happy spots! Here is one of my favorites. This old chair, jug and crock were in my own Grandma's garden. She can no longer labor over a garden so I acquired them! I have a Dahlia plant starting in the crock and my sedum is just filling out beautifully. Normally there is a pot full of flowers inside the seat of the chair to, but we have a small problem. We haven't put gutters on the new house yet. So when it rains that pot just fills up and over with water. I have been using it to save on water instead and dump it out on it's neighbors!

There is a shipment of 'junk' on it's way to me from eBay that will complete my garden. I am so excited! Just getting it all done will be work. I have plans to create a container garden out of two old washtubs to go with the old hand pump that used to sit on this homeplace, but I need a hacksaw (and preferably a MAN) to size it down for me.

Our 40 acres has been in our family for 40 years or more. It was used for pasture ground for the family cattle until my husband and I got married. An old house, The Lambert Place, it was always called, sat here that was probably 150 years old and we burned it down to put our first home (a trailer) up. I saved the hand pump in the kitchen to someday be able to create this little vision of my garden. I didn't bother much with landscaping and things until we built the new house. I think I was waiting to put all of that effort into our permanent dwelling. Now that it is here it is so exciting and makes me feel very accomplished to actually be doing it! We have lived up on this hill 10 years now and the old timer's are finally calling it the Stark Place instead of the Lambert Place....(we always used to be referred to as 'the kids who live on the Lambert place') I suppose they have seen us paying our dues, turning the ground, making it our own. It's time to pass the title on to it's rightful owners. :0)

I love bein' a country gal! And oh what the hell, here's a few more pics too...if you don't want to sit and look at flowers all night go check out some of my friend's blogs over to the right!

A sunset, all in one little tulip!

Aren't these great! I got this $25 Purple leaf sand cherry tree at Wal-Mart last fall for $1!!! It was the last thing they had left around November and I scooped them up! Five of them I think! If I could have fit more in my mini-van I would have. I considered leaving the kids behind for a split second but thenI gathered my senses and realized if left my kids, who would hold the water hose while I planted them! ;0)

This side of the house (the east side) will continue to be a work in progress for a while. There is still a lot of backfilling to be done, but some of it may have to wait until this summer. We revolve around farming season and that takes priority over everything else until a crop is in the ground, or harvest is finished. But this little old rocking chair had been tossed up in the hay loft of my Papa's barn and dragged it down and stained up a bit. The rusty fluted feed bowl is going to host some Hen and Chicks very soon...I am expecting them from e-bay as well. (yes gardening is not my only addicition~give me a break I could be smoking crack in the bathroom, walking around thin as a rail with a bee hive hairdo that hasn't seen a comb in 2 months...oh wait, that's not me, that's Amy Winehouse...wwheew! Yeah, it could definately be worse!;0)

~~Happy Spring~~