Gardening Woes

I decided a couple of months ago I would try to grow a few vegetables since I'm missing my dad's fresh produce from the B-N-V; I started with broccoli and two types of lettuce as mentioned in this post.  Sadly most of the lettuce either got too much water or was frozen by some of the cold nights we had.  I just figured, "no huge loss, at least the broccoli looks great!"  Well, I went to the backyard one afternoon last week and this is what I saw:

Something had completely destroyed the broccoli leaves and the little bit of lettuce that was left!  I immediately started searching online for what might eat broccoli in the city.  We've never seen rabbits and our yard is completely fenced in, so the only thing I can figure is that the culprits were either squirrels or chipmunks- that's what we've seen a lot of in our yard.  Then of course I called my dad, to see if there was any hope for our broccoli without its leaves.  He recommended that we start over with summer veggies, since rodents aren't supposed to like the leaves of those as much.  So now I've planted tomatoes, bell pepper, squash, and zucchini.  I read online that hanging CD's in the garden will discourage squirrels because they'll run away when they see their reflections.  So far, so good; I'm just holding my breath and hoping we get SOME vegetables out of this.  Anyone have ideas of how to keep away pesky varmints? ;)

We have really enjoyed watching the dogwood trees begin blooming, and we have TONS of violets popping up all over our yard!

Happy Spring!

New wreath

It was time to update the front door wreath for spring, and this week was perfect since flower stems were 50% off at Hobby Lobby.  I used a 40% coupon for the vine wreath, and I already had the ribbon on hand.  The total cost was around $7!

First, I wound the ribbon around the wreath.  Then, I cut the flower stems into smaller pieces that I kind of randomly wove under and over the ribbon and parts of the vine.  Of course I used my trusty hot glue gun to tack some of the pieces in place.

Ta da!  

Maybe next time I make a wreath, our front door will be red. :)

March

As we were anxiously awaiting the spring weather, in March we...

1. went to a Josh Turner concert at the Peace Center with our friends Bonnie & William

Great show at an excellent venue!

2. went to Clinton to cheer on Blue Hose tennis and visit Team Herendeen (Adam & Erin)

3. visited York- we had a great time visiting family and seeing the peach trees beginning to bloom

4. had Rob's parents to our house for Easter weekend.  

We played some corn hole in the backyard, went downtown to one of our favorite places to eat, The Velo Fellow, and enjoyed the nice weather by walking around Falls Park.  We went to church and then came back to the house to eat way too much- I even pulled out the fine china!  Grandmothers would be proud. :)  I made Pioneer Woman's strawberry shortcake cake which was a big hit.  Having Bush-N-Vine strawberries to make it also helped!