How Does Your Garden Grow?

Poorly.

If only hours watching Victory Garden and Gardening with Cisco translated into a beautiful garden.

I love the idea of a beautiful lush garden. 

I think I have a semi green thumb.

Unfortunately I also have a lazy behind.

(Yay me for finally cleaning out the raised beds. Not too bad for 30 min)

 

Every year about this time, I get serious spring fever.
Bulbs busting through the ground  and primroses at the grocery store always suck me in.

(Yay for the bulbs I actually planted and mental note to plant more next year)

I start planning what kind of wonderful stuff I will plant. I look forward to the perennials that get better each year and thinking about which annuals I can tuck in between them. 

(always exciting to see the peonies start poking up through the ground)

I also am a fan of the idea of a veggie garden.  I'm not a big veggie fan, but every year I tell myself "it will taste better if I grow it myself."  The jury is still out on this. I grow lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and asparagus. I start out strong, but mid July when my garden really gets going and needs me the most I kind of peter out.  My veggie garden is on the side of our house so I think it is an "out of sight out of mind" kind of thing.  Who knows, but I'm going to try again this year.

 

The dream is a perennial garden.  Plant it once and enjoy it for year (in theory).  That was the hope

for the asparagus, but it just hasn't taken off like I had hoped. Maybe THIS will be the year.  On the other hand my rhubarb looks to be off to a strong start. 

With the PNW experiencing such a mild winter, Spring seems to be springing early.  Won't be long before the siren song of nurseries and plant displays out side of the local grocery stores start calling my name.
What are you planting this year??
:0)

Sink or Swim

I clearly have a problem when it comes to salvage stores.

Last week a dutch door.  Today it was a sink.

 

We are getting ready to redo our kitchen.  I definitely know what I like and what I want.  However, I'm starting to think the kitchen I've been seeing in my head (and Pinterest board) might not be the kitchen I actually need in the real world.

 

We went to a show room today to look at sinks.  Our mission a white porcelain, one bowl, under mount sink. Seems pretty basic right?  Found exactly that for the pretty price of $840. Um...yikes!!

Just a few blocks down the road is a Habitat for Humanity Restore.  Not as fun as Ballard Reuse since it has more "modern" salvage but it's still always fun to poke around. 

 

So making our way past the old closet doors and funky 80's light fixtures we end up in the sink section.  Next to the almond kitchen sinks and shell shaped bathroom sinks was this...

Hello Gorgeous.

 

What were the chances of finding this totally pristine farm sink??  Surely it was going to be priced pretty high, but nope, 60 bucks.  A quick google search and I knew the street value of this sink was $1100. Scooooooooooooooore. 

 

The next step was calling my contractor to get his take.  Well, he didn't seem to share my level of enthusiasm. Booo.  However, it is becoming clear that in addition to ripping apart my kitchen his job duties will include frequent reality checks.  Despite all the sound advice and reasons he offered I still bought the sink.  I just couldn't walk out of there without it.  Worse case I can throw it on Craigslist and double my money. 

So now the fun part begins. Surfing the web to try and find a picture of what my new sink could look like as part of my new kitchen.  To be honest, I go back and forth on it.  I think the deciding factor will be the amount of space I have between the counter and my window.  There is not a lot of room and it may turn to be a no go. 

I guess I could always go with plan B.

TGIF

:0)