A New Journey

My name is Amanda! I'm a work at home mom of two with a wonderful supportive husband. Some of you may know me from my crochet patterns website, MNE Crafts (www.mnecrafts.com). This new blog is to explore another hobby of mine that isn't crochet related at all (okay, that's a lie... I have a cute design in mind for my little gardening shovel that I will have to share).

2014 marks my first year at making a go of a garden. And it has been quite the adventure. In February, my family and I moved to a small town about an hour away from the city we had been living in. When we picked the place we'd call home for a few years I was so excited to see a little area for gardening! Once summer officially started I started weeding, working and prepping the ever living heck out of this area. I even did a ton of work in the other areas of the yard.

Here's an image to give you an idea of all the work I had been putting in and you can't see the seed we had planted just yet. The rose bushes the house came with looked pitiful. So many dead branches! So, for the first time in my life, I set to trimming them. My goodness, they looked pitiful. There were hardly any branches at all. Some beautiful roses did spring forth though! And I'm really excited for the branches to spring back next year! I did manage to get some really beautiful roses, particularly one which is my favorite. 

These two roses are really pretty though they had some rough edges. My favorite was one of the last to bloom and almost doesn't even look like a rose! It was incredible to go out my back door and see it! 

See. I told you it was beautiful! :p I didn't edit this at all. The colors were that bight. And it was from the asme bush as the pink one above! Crazy huh? I can't wait to see how it does next year when I can start working on them sooner, get some rose fertilizer around them and what not. 

I'd share more current pictures of my yards but weeds have taken over again and its to hot to do anything about it today (but I shall not give up! Those weed will not win!). 

So, after all of that yardwork was done I really buckled down to preparing the area for the garden. No rocks, no weeds. broken everything up a good 6" down. Watered thoroughly... etc. It's a long list of everything I did and with only basic tools.

Then I planted everything only to find out that nothing would even germinate because of the alkalie in the entire area! I'd have known that had I lived her longer. Okay, I have to back up. I say nothing germinated but that isn't 100% true. One little cucumber plant managed to spring up out of the ground. It gave me hope only to die within a week. Hope dashed.

Somehow, One of the tomato plants we transplanted has survived as well. I wonder if it will produce anything. I guess we will find out :p haha

So yeah, here's my intro. Check back for more because one way or another I'm getting fresh freakin' produce to eat at my table! :p