rocks – A Smith of All Trades

Tomato Tally

July 21, 2014July 21, 2014 Jessica Smith

My buddy Amy suggested I keep a running tally of how many tomatoes I get from my garden this year. Being the garden-lover I am, how could I pass up such a fun idea?

Yesterday’s haul at 8:30 p.m. proved very fruitful, no garden pun intended. And I know we missed a bunch of pickins because it was getting dark. As of last night, the tomato tally is up to 33. Not bad! I am hoping to get enough to make a batch of salsa this upcoming weekend… that means that I need to stop giving them away and eating them, which is the hard part. I still have a few onions left from my garden and my jalapeño peppers are growing like weeds. If I have enough tomatoes, I should be able to make salsa almost purely from my garden 🙂

In this picture you’ll see a green zucchini, a yellow squash, an oddly shaped cucumber, a handful of cherry tomatoes, three purple heirloom tomatoes, a few Roma tomatoes, a few early girl tomatoes and one yellow heirloom tomato. That are so pretty. There are also two banana peppers, which I do not remember planting. I wonder if labels got mixed up at Home Depot or something…. I planted tabasco peppers (those aren’t growing, darn), red bell peppers, green bell peppers, cayenne peppers and jalapeño peppers. Somehow the bananas snuck in there. They won’t go to waste.

Speaking of nature (good transition, yes?), Brian and I hiked the Billy Goat trail between the C&O Canal and Potomac River.

It was the best hike we’ve ever been on and I can’t recommend it enough. If you are anywhere near Great Falls National Park, you have to hike this trail.

Other than hiking, I spent the weekend winning a round of mini golf….

(Go me! I never win at mini golf!)

… hanging out with our neighbors…. (yes, our dogs are strange)

… and visiting with my cousins. Oh, and I helped paint my friend’s basement. Quite the tiring and eventful weekend.

Hope you all had great weekends!

Garden, Uncategorized

My dad, my landscaping hero

July 22, 2013July 22, 2013 Jessica Smith

My dad is my hero. Not because of the sweet things he does for me and Brian, but because he’s an all-around wonderful person.

This weekend when Brian and I went to the beach with our friends, my dad also became my landscaping hero (as if he wasn’t already).

I knew he wanted to reapply black top to our driveway, so while we were away he came over and transformed our driveway.

This photo does not do our driveway justice. It is looking fly! Also, notice the rocks alongside of the driveway!? They are finished, too. Only took a few months and us paying someone to finish it. Oh well.

That would have been awesome in itself, but he didn’t stop there. He also removed our old well poll from the front yard, which I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it is.

But wait, there is more! He planted begonias in our landscaping and put out American flags around our house!

American Flags

Bogonias

Isn’t he just awesome!? It was so nice to come home and be proud of the way my house looks, and my dad has been instrumental in making our house look great.

While I’m talking about the outside of my house, here are some pretty pictures of plants around the yard:

And here are my dead stumps!

Tonight we are tackling the lamp post. I’d bought a new post altogether (even though I told dad I should just spray paint the old one), but I’m going to return it. I spray painted the old one with black paint to make it look just like new. OK, it doesn’t really look like new up close, but who really examines a lamp post closely?

Lamp post prep

Here’s a shot of my house as a whole.

A HUGE thank you to my dad for all of the help and positive encouragement he’s given us to tackle the landscaping at our first home. It’s been a ton of work, but I am really proud of how far we’ve come.

Garden

Productive planting

May 23, 2013 Jessica Smith

Yesterday was an incredibly productive day. I mean seriously productive. I got up at 4:50 a.m. and went to a spinning class. When I got home, I took my dog for a walk before work. I made breakfast for two days and lunch. I got a ton of stuff done at work, too. AND when I got home, we made dinner that I had marinated overnight before running to Home Depot to buy mulch. And yes, I spread it, too! This seriously never happens! I don’t know what took over and said “You are not gonna sit still for a single second today,” but it needs to happen way more often.

On to my productive planting…

This weekend my dad met up with a parent he met at on of Elliott’s baseball games go was splitting her perennials. She gave him an entire trunk-full of plants for us to plant in our yard! Thank you so much, Rene!

We got right to work unloading and planning where to plant our plants so we could get them back in the ground and soaked with water. Three hours later we planted two hastas, three liriope, a bunch of lamb’s ear, a bunch of fern…. and a ton of other stuff we didn’t know the name of. We also transplanted one of my strawberry patches to join it with the other patch, so now I have one huge patch! Yummo.

Last night on my productive spree, I dragged the hubby (OK, OK, he went rather willingly) to Home Depot to buy mulch so I could mulch my new garden beds. We bought 15 bags for only $1.48 each. Score!

In the photo above we have some daffodils braided down on the left and my strawberry patch on the right. I’m not crazy about daffodils, so I am thinking I might eventually make the whole thing a strawberry patch 😀

This picture is less exciting, seeing as I don’t know the name of this plant, but it has pretty purple flowers and will hopefully wind up the fence when it grows. It also shows my next plan for my garden, which is lining all of my beds with big(ish) rocks. The tricky part — I don’t want to pay for them haha. I will be rock scavenging to try to complete this task. I’m starting with the beds on the side of the house so the incompleteness won’t be super obvious when you drive by. I think it will look really great when it’s done.

This weekend I’ll be planting six tomato plants, which is absurd because how many tomatoes does one person really need? And yes, only one person in our house eats them — me!

I got three regular plants, one Roma plant and two cherry tomato plants. CAN’T WAIT FOR TOMATOES!

Speaking of gardening… my broccoli are doing well (I think). We cut down the itty bitty tree right behind our car port earlier this spring to help get my garden bed a bit more light. The broccoli look like they are doing well, but I know my dad’s plants will be 80 times the size because of their direct sunlight all day long. I think this year will be really telling for future garden plans. I thought about moving my garden to the back corner of the yard that gets more sun, but that was gonna be way more expensive so I decided to give this area one more try.

And to round out a productive planting post… you know what isn’t productive?

This guy….

He just wants to play in the dirt and chase water from the hose. In fact, last night he took to crying when we stopped playing with the hose. Needless to say, he was rather soaked by the time we went inside for the night.

And when he isn’t sidetracking me from gardening, he’s certainly not being productive inside….

Lazy bones!

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