What we've been working on...

I mentioned in a previous post that we've been working on the outside of our house, which was highly neglected last year due to having a baby. We are definitely not finished, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some updates so you can see the progress. So we'll start with the new roof and my newly purchased ferns. Previously, the roof was just regular charcoal gray...nothing special. Now we have architectural shingles, which really make such a difference on our house, and the color is more of a neutral, brownish color that goes better with the color of the house. Here is a closer shot of the ferns that Little and I picked out yesterday. There is a great little roadside market called "The Garden" in Athens. They have the best hanging baskets for such great prices, much better than those you'd find in a store.
And on to the backyard...there is A LOT going on in our backyard right now. In addition to Frank getting the pool ready, he has been doing a lot of gardening. He has done a lot of research on square foot gardening and today he finished building and planting quite a few of the boxes. There will be many more to come, but this is such a huge start.He did a great job building the boxes and making the soil/compost/other stuff mixture to plant the seeds in. So far, the boxes you see above have seeds for cabbage, broccoli, tomato plants, green beans, pole beans, squash, bell peppers, hot peppers, brussel sprouts, spinach and corn. The next boxes will have root vegetables, including onions, carrots and potatoes. He also has two blueberry bushes, two strawberry plants, two cinnamon trees, a lemon tree and a mandarin orange tree and is going to plant 4 olive trees. He also planted an herb garden right outside my kitchen door, complete with oregano, basil, sage, cilantro, mint, dill, and lemon thyme.
I'm so excited to be able to cook all of these fresh vegetables when they are ready to harvest. Most of them should be ready in about ten weeks.

In addition to all of the gardening Frank has been doing, he's also potted some more decorative trees and flowers to spruce the place up. We're hoping to have a little paradise in our backyard this summer. When everything is finished and cleaned up, I'll post more pics.