Happy Valentine's Day ... or ... "I went to a garden party ..."  

Posted by Bade Millsap

My apologies to Rick Nelson!

We've been married for going on 37 years and pretty much every year for Valentine's Day I've given Carolyn roses ... very traditional ... but I have to tell you after 37 years it's getting tough to be 'original' with roses!

Pretty much since we've lived here in Bulverde, Carolyn has maintained some sort of vegetable garden. But, the last few years production from that garden has been poor primarily because over 25+ years the trees around the garden have finally gotten so big they effectively block the sun. Consequently, "the garden" has been transformed into more of a flower garden than a vegetable garden.

A few weeks ago we decided to act on the notion we have had for the last few years to 'move' the garden to a sunnier spot and significantly reduce the size, concentrating on tomatoes, peppers and maybe a couple of other things in small quantity. We have debated the best way to do this for a few years now and never came up with a plan both of us liked. Inspiration struck when I saw a 'doggie kennel' at the local Tractor Supply! It already had a gate, was 6 feet tall and a manageable 10 feet square. We loaded it up in the truck, bought literally a ton of limestone border rocks and two yards of good garden soil and had "instant garden"!

Cool ... except ... to my eye the damn thing stuck out like a sore thumb on top of the hill. I thought about painting it green, hopefully to camouflage it a bit and had even gotten Carolyn's permission to do so. Happily I procrastinated just enough!

As I was viewing the 'sore thumb garden' from inside a few days ago it seemed to me that if there were just some 'color' it wouldn't look so bad. And like a Senior throwing a rock at a Freshman it struck me that this would be the perfect Valentine's gift ... staying with the 'flowers theme' in general but at the same time giving Carolyn yet another excuse to feed her 'flower buying sickness' (she has it pretty bad!) and dealing with what I considered to be a bit of an eye sore.

Today, Carolyn and I spent a very enjoyable day picking out planters, figuring out how to mount said planters, buying appropriate for the season flowers and planting them.

It was a good day!

Happy Valentine's Day my dear!

From Bade's web log

From Bade's web log

Here it's not a garden yet .. but all the flowers are planted!

From Bade's web log

Now it's a garden!! The first plant is in the ground...

From Bade's web log

Just some 'winter' vegetables right now but soon tomatoes, peppers and peas will be added!

From Bade's web log

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 13, 2010 at Saturday, February 13, 2010 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

2 comments

great idea!

February 14, 2010 at 8:49 AM

very nicely done! <3

February 14, 2010 at 10:14 AM

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