Winter Garden Update

I could post about a lot of things today.  About how we're desperately trying to avoid the tummy bug.  It's going around our area, and I have a phobia about my children and puke.  I don't care about me, I went through many months of morning sickness.  And, Troy can handle himself if he's sick.  But, my girls, I don't want to see them in so much pain.

Or, I could post about how cute my kids are.  Maybe I'll do that soon.

Or, how about my cooking?  I've been trying to perfect a couple of bread recipes lately.  Brown buns, which I posted about recently.  Sourdough bread.  I created my own starter.  Yay me!

But, today, I'm going to tell you about how my garden is going this winter.

We are trying something new, similar to lasagna gardening.  It's not true lasagna gardening, where you lay down cardboard and then pile inches of brown and green matter on top.  I don't have enough leaves to do that.  I'm planning to start getting grounds from my sister's Starbucks, but haven't started that yet.  I don't want to use too many of those, anyway, they could really affect my soil.

But, we did do a modified version.  My main desire is to control the weeds.  I wasn't able to set up my garden the right way last year, due to my hectic work schedule and pregnancy, and the grass was super prolific.  It took over my poor garden.  So, over the fall, we laid down large pieces of cardboard and covered them with some leaves, grass clippings, dirt, etc.  I also added a small amount of green matter, but not too much.  I hope it starts to help control the weeds.

My small compost pile...

I purchased some bulbs for the front yard.  We don't spend much time in some of the front yard, and I want to make a butterfly and hummingbird garden out there.  I want to plant elephant ears and lillies up against our garage, where the water softener drains.

We filled our birdfeeders and are loving watching the birds eat.  I counted over 16 goldfinches at once, and we've seen blue jays, cardinals and doves, along with other little birds.

Here are a little black bird and the goldfinches...

I mulched around my blueberries recently.  One of them seems to have died at the end of last year, I hope it recovers in the spring.  I have a set of 3 from Johnny's that the girls gave me for Mother's day a couple of years ago.

The swiss chard that I planted last spring is still growing.  It's amazing stuff!

I planted a rosemary this year in the front garden.  It's one of my favorite herbs, and it should be a perennial here in zone 7.  It actually grows as hedges at our library.  The tips have browned and bent over, but it's mostly green.  It looks way better than any other rosemary I've grown before.

My lavender I started from seed.  I grew it out back in the main garden in the summer, and transplanted three plants into the front garden at the end of the season.  They are doing wonderful, I love lavender, too.

 Happy winter gardening to you.