Grandmama (Ben’s mom) came for a quick trip this weekend. We jam packed it with a lot of good family time and a lot of fun. She is an avid gardener and came with us to the L.A. Garden Show. We all thought it was the coolest ever and will be even more prepared next year. Ben came home with 15 different tomato varieties and I came home with some really fantastic ferns. They are seriously the most fantastic things ever as far as house plants go. Once, I have them up I will share it.

After the garden show, we came home, cleaned up, dropped off our plants and made our way to the beach, but not before we stop by to pick up some Sprinkles… yum! Then, we ended the evening with a yummy dinner right by the sea and a walk admiring the ocean and sunset. Oh how I wish we came to the beach more often!

Now the weekend is done. How is it that is always flies by?!! Lots of things to do this week, as usual, but all I want to do is cuddle and stay warm in bed. Anyone else feel the same?

Hello Monday! It is nice to see you again.

We love eating from our garden. Recently, we harvested some dinosaur and curly kale and whipped up a big batch of kale crispies. See all that kale pictured below, we cooked it all in one night and ate it all in one night too. Eating vegetables in our house is so good and yummy!

Then last night, Ben and I were still a little bit hungry before going to bed, so he decided to whip us up a smoothie to get more fruits and veggies in for the day. He put in some apples, oranges, blueberries, and a turnip. Yes, a turnip. Let me just say it was the nastiest smoothie ever! I did in fact drink it all, just for all the nutritious stuff inside, but I did hold my nose or at least tried to. It was literally like drinking horseradish! Yuck! My nose hurt so much afterward. That was my only experience of something healthy tasting so, so bad. The things we do in this house to eat our fruits and vegetables!

The weekend is almost here and my piles are slowly dwindling. I will attack more of it today. Unfortunately, my Benny is still sick and I hope he gets better soon, though it is kinda nice having him home this week! I like him being here. I hope he feels better by Easter. Speaking of Easter, which is a very special day and a day we are going to happily celebrate. All because of what Christ did on that cross, I am free, no longer a slave to my sin. Praise God for his abundant grace and forgiveness.

Have a wonderful Easter weekend! I will also be introducing some of the newest sponsors with some good giveaways, so come back and visit.

There is just an abundance in our vegetable beds right now. We spent yesterday evening harvesting and caring for our little vegetable garden. We are in awe of it all and are so thankful to God for allowing this mini vegetable aisle in our very own backyard! No need for us to buy any veggies from the grocery store, homegrown is better!

We took some inside, cleaned them up, and had some for dinner. It is kinda cool to eat things from your very own backyard!

I am sure you have figured out we like to eat pretty healthy, but we do indulge now and then, though it is all done in moderation. Plus, I definitely have a sweet tooth, so I need my desserts every once in awhile. A big reason we are like this is because Ben is a dietitian.

When we started dating, he just started going back to school to get his masters in nutritional science and was already eating healthy. After about 9 months of dating, I lost 12 pounds (and it stayed off until I had kids) because of all the healthy eating I was doing when we were together. Talk about a weight loss system that works! I guess it makes a difference if you cut out all the crappy food in your life. Now, he currently works for a local hospital teaching health education and creates nutrition lesson plans for a local school district. Therefore, he definitely practices what he preaches and makes sure his family does too (though I do sneak in bad stuff every so often)! All this to say, if you want to lose weight… date or marry a dietitian! Kidding. Okay, maybe just a little bit serious.

I love our garden and my hot gardener, but I love the God who allows this all to happen even more!

This was our garden in December:

Ben is indeed a planner. He always has been and always will be. Thus, we have 4 raised beds and he meticulously planned out all the seeds he would put and where. It is quite a site to see the work he put into making a map of our garden. I, on the other hand, would have just willy nilly tossed the seeds to and fro and covered it with dirt. Isn’t that how we got apple trees? Didn’t Johnny Appleseed do the same?

Our answer to keeping the bugs out, Ben created these arches using PVC pipes and purchased some gardening cloth that would go over it, but still let water and light in. My lack of proper gardening lingo just shows who really does the gardening around here. There is a drip system installed to make sure our little seedlings get some water to grow.

I am almost sure these tiny things are brussel sprout seeds.

Don’t mind his crazy hair. We typically work on the garden first thing Saturday mornings, so we have bed head. I don’t think the garden cares much about our looks.

This is our garden in January:

Meet our garden in February:

February was full of crazy rain, which was really good for our garden, as this is what our garden looks like in March:

We spent this past Saturday morning pulling weeds and harvesting because boy were some vegetables ready to be harvested! The broccoli rabe was so big that it was bulging out of the covering and was even taller than Brave!

Meet our kale.

Our cauliflower, and it is orange cauliflower, which is my favorite.

Our turnips.

Our cabbage.

Rainbow Swiss chard.

And of course, our giant broccoli rabe.

There are a plethora of other things, if you look closely at Ben’s map, but that is all I remember so far.

We worked in the garden until it started raining, in which the girls and I danced and sang a bit in the rain (don’t tell my Mom cause she would freak out and tell us we would get sick!), then Ben harvested some broccoli rabe and went in to cook us a yummy lunch.

We really love our garden. It is so nice to step out into our own backyard and get some ingredients to make a wonderfully healthy meal. I can’t wait until some other things are ready to be harvested!

Here are some resources we used in the building of our garden:

If you think it is impossible for you to achieve this, don’t think that. We don’t live in the country with wide open spaces, but live in a suburb of a regular neighborhood, where most houses look alike, so a garden like this is definitely doable in just any plain, ordinary backyard. Plus, if you know anything about southern California backyards, well, ours is pretty small. We are definitely beginners at all this gardening stuff. If you want to see a few more pictures of our garden click here.

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Don’t forget the giveaways.

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We harvested the last of our tomatoes, uprooted plants that are done for the season, and got the ground ready for the next season’s seeds. We all absolutely love gardening though it is all still very new to us and we have a lot more to learn. It is also very cool that Brave and True get really involved and aren’t afraid to get dirty. Our girls are pros at balancing their wheelbarrows too! Thus, we enjoyed a Saturday of smelling new dirt and digging. I really love the smell of the soil. It smells kinda like rain. We still have a long way to go, but we can’t wait to reap the new harvest in a few months.

Amidst our readying the soil, we found lots of these creepy, slimy things. We kinda freaked out (we are new to this stuff) and thinking they were bad, we (okay, Ben) went through the soil looking for all of them to toss. They were found near the roots and there were tons!!! Now, we learn after visiting a nursery that they are called grubs and okay for the garden. I guess they just turn into beetles of sorts. Can anyone confirm that? Are those scary looking bugs really alright for our garden?

I love this gardening stuff, but I’m not quite used to the bugs. Hornworms I can deal with, but these things give me the heebie jeebies!!!

I am also getting ready for a shop update at the end of this week. It will be some more cameos and fall hair clips. I want to get at least one shop update each week until I go on my little hiatus to rest before baby. I am thinking of closing the shop beginning-mid November and won’t be open again probably until February, so if you need something for Christmas, you better let me know now!

Happy Monday!!!

Dear Tomato Chomper,Please leave my tomato plants alone. I do not think highly of you, frankly, I do not even like you. You seem to be doing nothing good in my garden. Unfortunately, if and when I find you, you will be eliminated immediately. I have already rid my garden of 10 of your thick, yucky relatives. I am just giving you advance warning as this is your chance to get away before I do away with you myself. Plus, you are making my girls very unhappy because they love their tomatoes. I have strict orders from them to do all I can to save their precious tomatoes and that is what I intend to do.

Sincerely,

Ruby