Garden Set-up

This year Ben and I were finally in a place that we could start a garden.  As one pin on pinterest says, "Gardening: it is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes".

We knew the soil in the area was pretty lousy so we'd have to build up our own and use raised beds.  We looked into boxing the beds off with wood but the price added up quick so we opted for cinder blocks which were cheap and have the added bonus of providing mini-planters on all of the boarders.  Since we didn't have time to make our own compost we bought some and mixed it with topsoil.

Before we got to placing down the blocks, I tilled the entire area so that fewer weeds would grow up and so that the deeper rooting veggies could easily get down as far as they wanted.  As you can see below, Doc supervised this process.

After the cinder blocks were in place I mulched in-between to keep weeds down, provide an aesthetically pleasing space, and a cushion for kneeling on while working the ground.  The space on the left side of the photo with the chairs is my mini-garden oasis.

After the area was finished with initial set up we mixed in topsoil and compost into two of the beds for spinach  lettuce, peas, and carrots - all which are cold hardy and can tolerate our April and May nights.  I also added a little compost to the pre-existing soil in the flower bed and installed some wooden edging to contain the soil and add a nice touch.  

Next up... planting (we're already past this but hey I can't keep up with the blog when there's so much work going on)!!!

We got a dog...

Yep, we did.

I've known that it might be in the works for a while now, but I was keeping quiet until it was official - and that was REALLY hard to do!

Ben and I have wanted a dog for a long time.  We've been seriously looking into it for almost a year now.  Last May we started looking into apartments that would let us have a dog but with our job situations at the time we didn't want to sign into a year long lease and good thing we didn't!

But now we're happily living in Merrimack and with a reasonable sized yard, a job that lets me bring a pup to work, and our active lifestyle we just knew a dog was right for us.

While it is very attractive to get a puppy we decided that we'd adopt an older dog because we wanted it to be a little more "field ready" for us and would let us transition into the dog lifestyle without needing to housebreak and teach a dog everything from a to z.

As some of you may know, I've always been a fan of Border Collies.  Long before my family had BC's, we had shelties, but I always wanted a BC.  Eventually our first BC, Meg, came to us in sheltie rescue (figure that one out!) and while she was a tough nut to crack, she became everyone's love.

Meg (pictured above) was my buddy for a long long time and it killed me every time I had to leave to go off to college or away for a while but she always perked up when I got home even when she was blind and deaf.  Well up to just a few months before she passed away she still wanted to swim and play every time I came home.  Unfortunately, as all of us do, Meg eventually passed.  Fortunately she lived to be a ripe old 18 and lived quite the full life.  

In addition to Meg my mother has raised a number of solid BC's who are all fun, sharp, and loving.  And being the stubborn person that I am, I wanted a BC despite knowing how challenging they can be at times.  Fortunately, Ben and I got lucky because a fantastic dog named Doc (below) was brought to our attention.  He was the former Canadian Nursery Champion in 2005 and is, way more importantly to us, one of the sweetest, most gentle, friendly dogs we'd ever met.  

On Saturday 3/16/13, I picked Doc up and took him to live with us in NH.  He wasn't a huge fan of the car ride but made it OK.  The first night he seemed a little down but since then he has adjusted to cuddles in NH very well.  He loves going for walks (below) and loves to beg for food.  

Ben and I feel very lucky to have such a great dog in our lives and are really excited to see how things progress over the next few weeks.  

I'm sure there will be lots of posts about Doc as we are so excited and in many ways he's like our first "kid", unless you count our 10 fish, but they're a little less cuddly...

Bringing it back to life

OK so I used to have a blog that I'd ramble about everyday things in.  However, with Facebook gaining ground, I mostly updated there.

But, now I'm back here.  Why?  Well Facebook isn't as good for the amount of blathering I want to do.  So sure, I'll still put things there, but I'll put a little more here.  Get it? Got it? Good.

So with that ... I'm excited to report that a long time desire of having a garden is going to be realized this year.  I haven't been part of a garden since being at Messiah and helping to start one there.  I imagine this one will be much smaller but still substantial in size.  Here's my proposed design:

I'm not sure this is the one I'll build.  It sort of depends on the longevity of our life in the house we're in so I'm sure a concrete plan will develop more in time, but if I could have anything, that's what I would want.  Who wants to help?  You can have some of the produce. I could make it much smaller... but I think (at least for now) that I don't want to in order to grow a surplus so I can can my own sauce and salsa.  We'll see.