Preparing for Summer's Bounty

I'm getting really excited for Summer to arrive! I spent all Winter daydreaming about the projects I could get to once the snow melted. Two big goals of mine for this year was to get some landscaping done around our house and start a garden. I'm happy to report that both are well on their way to being finished!

I started with the garden space, choosing to till two large plots. One for food, one for flowers. Thanks to my amazing uncle Rick who lent us his tiller, my dad and husband knocked out the plots in minutes flat. 

I also got to try out the tiller, which was fun. I love all of the new equipment I've been able to operate on the farm! (Don't mind my outfit...matching hasn't been my biggest strength lately!)

I have some starter plants already purchased for the fruit/veggie garden and scored on seeds for the flower garden. I want happy pollinators in my backyard, so I'm crossing my fingers that both gardens succeed! I haven't started planting just yet. My grandma has always told me to wait until after Mother's Day - and this old wives' tale has never been wrong.

The next thing I tried my hand at was laying out plans for landscaping around the house. I had a blank slate to work with. An absolute dream...and nightmare...because the ideas just keep coming!

To plan how far out I wanted to go out from the house, I used two main tools: Weed Killer and Spray Paint! I measured and eyeballed how I wanted to lay everything out first. I then used spray paint to draw a line around the house where I wanted the landscaping to reach and sprayed weed killer between the house and the spray painted line.

I'm filling in the mapped out area with rock, surrounding several buried pots that I'll fill with flowers. I also plan to build some simple planters to place between the buried pots to add some height variation.

I wanted the front yard landscaping to be simple and easy to maintain since we have a lot going on in our backyard (a more "wild/native" plant approach) to support my B's (bees, bats, butterflies, birds). You could say I'm following the "Mullet Philosophy" for our landscaping - business in the front, party in the back!

Like the gardens, this is still a work in progress. I'll post a full DIY tutorial on both when they're finished!

I'm happy with where we're at for only being at the farm for a year and two months! So much has changed already, with so much more yet to come. We love this little place of ours that continues to feel more and more like home. We don't take a second of country living for granted, and take as much time as we can pausing to give thanks for the beauty it has brought into our lives!