One of our requirements when we moved into this place was that we needed to have some outside space. I didn't care if that was a balcony, a deck, a patio, a roof; I just needed to be able to open a door in my home and be outside and have space to have a few plants. Between here and the Blue House, we lived in the Pink Palace disaster zone and there was no outside space and I hated it.
We've lived here for four years now. FOUR YEARS. And for most of those four years some sad empty pots and a few dead plants lived on our little balcony. And then a stroller took over pretty much all of the space. And then we had some storage issues and the stuff from our storage room ended up on the deck.
And then I had enough. I wanted a garden. But we didn't have a yard so the deck would have to do.
Partway through the clearing up process (I forgot to take a real before shot)
We were cleaning things up and putting things away and I discovered some gross stuff on the carpet (yes, there was ugly green carpet on our deck) and I as I was trying to figure out how to get it off, I realized the carpet wasn't stuck down. Up it came and off to the home store we went to invest in some floating deck tiles. I LOVE THEM! Why didn't I do this four years ago?
I went crazy with the plants and had to get more planters. And then I bought too many planters and so, for this year at least, some of them have to live in the storage room, but next year, they will all be out there full of plants.
J helped me plant everything - I didn't manage to get any pictures as we were both covered in muck. She had just come back from my mom and dad's where she had helped them plant some things in the garden and she didn't quite grasp that she couldn't make the same mucky mess on the deck that she could in the garden. We had a great time planting and now she's excited to water them before bed every night and check the strawberries for ripe fruit.
Tonight we made our first strawberry harvest:
J is pretty stylish these days - those glasses are bug glasses and the lens open up...
Isn't it cute? J said it was super yummy. We're now on strawberry watch as there are a number more on both plants that are just a few sunshine-filled hours away from being edible.
With the nice weather the last few days, we've really noticed everything taking off. Some of the flower baskets have totally filled out, the tomato plant is almost as tall as J, the beans are looking more like beans everyday, the basil is visible from inside the house. It's awesome! J is so excited about our garden. Now she just laments the lack of an easily accessible yard space. One day kid, one day!
Oh yeah, and I get to cross one off the 101 list because we have basil, rosemary, parsley, chives and oregano out there. We've used some of the basil, chives and oregano so far. I love having fresh herbs. One day when we have a real garden I will have ten times the number of basil plants though...we love basil in this house!
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