I thought this was a crafter's blog...

Or a painter's blog... or a quilter's blog...?

(And then I look at my sewing table which is covered with gardening items)

Uhhhh... yeah, it is... sort of.... but I seem to have this new love... of gardening. And that has taken over my life lately. I go out into the garden, I go to garden shops, I watch gardening videos on YouTube, I go to bed thinking of what I want to do out in the garden the next day... I think I am smitten.

I am sure I will find time for art and sewing soon enough, but for now, I am basking in the deliciousness of fresh strawberries and veg for a morning egg scramble, or greens for my salad, zucchini and yellow squash for my dinners, herbs for my cooking or tea...

The tomatoes are green yet and peppers are barely a whisper, but they are coming.

As are beans and kale...

But my flowers seem to be lacking attention and I do want to attract bees and butterflies into the garden so aside from some very young attractor plants I have going in a wine barrel, I realized I needed something that is already flowering... so off to the garden center this morning to find more flowers.

Here are my favorite gardening YouTube channels these days:

Alys Fowler's Edible Garden (British)
CaliKim29
Kaye Kittrell
One Yard Revolution
Praxxus55712
Gary Pilarchik
MIgardener
Growing Your Greens

If you have a favorite organic gardening channel you would like to share with me, please leave it in the comments below. Thanks!

It's the journey, not the destination...

Not a new thought, but has come to mind recently as I think about my gardening journey this year. Sure it is cheaper to run down to the market and buy some big agribiz veggies that may or may not be healthy for me, but the fact is -- I love just being out there with my plants and making them into my own health food store as the months go by. If you have not ever tasted a tomato right off the plant in the height of summer ripeness, then in my opinion, you have not lived!

So now that I am back from a week away from my garden (small Oregon trip,family visit and fabric buying), I am excited about how it is progressing and what I still want to do in it.

First though, we put a new hummingbird feeder right outside the new kitchen door and it is such a pleasure to watch those little guys every day. In fact (wish I had my camera but I didn't want to move to get it) the other day Andy had a few of them taking nectar out of a little piece of the feeder in his hand! They were so trusting!

They just love this feeder. Now the ones hanging from the front porch are hardly used.

And then in the front yard I am making a small 4' x 4' square garden to house some extra veggies and flowers. I just ran out of room on the side garden!

Last week I made the raised bed from a kit I wanted to try (verdict: make your own, this is sort of flimsey) and started collecting cardboard to put down on the bottom.

Then it rained for a day and I got busy so just today I got the rest of the cardboard in, put wood chips along the edges at the bottom to try to help keep more weeds out and added 2 large bales of organic raised bed potting soil. Man were those things heavy! Then I added some worm castings and now it is ready to plant. I will plant some things in it tonight when it is cooler and in the next few days. I mainly want it to have food and herb plants and some flowers. I am hoping it will look ok in the front yard. I wish more people in our neighborhood had an edible garden in the front of their homes, then mine wouldn't stand out so much.

The more I work on the garden the more eager I am for things to grow so we can start eating from it! I know, in a few months I will have way too many zucchini and tomatoes but isn't that always the way?