2012 Garden Follow-up

Since I posted such an enthusiastic prequel post to my garden this year, I feel like I must post an update for completion. Well, my roses and clematis were featured in the Mother’s Day post. They were beautiful. I don’t quite know how or why, but the roses are still continuing to bloom. I have pretty roses on my bush right now, on October 6!

All of my herbs did well as they usually do, but sadly the vegetables that I planted did not live up to my bountiful hopes. I think part of the problem was that the tomatoes that I gave up on last year, and allowed to rot and die at the end of the season, were now enthusiastically volunteering to come up in all the pots where a seed had fallen, which included where I planted the green beans and snap peas. I think the tomatoes outcompeted them. I didn’t mind much, because all the flowers stole the show this year. For the first time in 3 summers I thought to put some flowers out front instead of just on the deck. Petunias love my front yard. They did really well. It was so nice to come home to a nice splash of color every evening. Here are a few pictures I took of the front of our house in late June:



We mulched! That was also a first in our 3 summers at this house. I can’t believe it took this long for me to think to make the front yard pretty, but I love it. The two little plants in front of the big window on the right are hydrangeas! I am so excited about those. I’ve always wanted hydrangeas to call my own. My mom helped me rip out the bushes that were previously in that spot. They were big and ugly and partially dead because there used to be a big tree blocking them for many years (the tree was cut down due to storm damage shortly before we moved in). Not only do I love that I am now the proud owner of hydrangeas, Jackie-cat loves her newly enhanced, shrub-free view of the great outdoors. I can’t wait to document how much bigger the hydrangeas get year after year. In front of them, to the right, is a perennial that my mom gave us this year. It was past its prime by the time I took this picture, but it’s really pretty with purple and yellow flowers. Here is a closer shot of my happy petunias, with a few marigolds too:



Here is a close-up shot of a tiny sunflower bloom. I planted 9 sunflowers out front. Only 3 made it to be super tall. The rest either got eaten by creatures or broken by the wind or just from getting too heavy for their own good and falling over and snapping. You can also see the “Dusty Miller” plant in the background. It was there when we moved in, and it’s not my favorite type of plant, and I almost ripped it out. But, I’m glad I didn’t because it started really thriving this year and gave me lots of happy little yellow flowers. 



Overall I think it was a pretty successful year in gardening!

June 2012 Whirlwind Weekend

June 2012 was a pretty packed month for us. We had Nick and Steph’s wedding in North Carolina, and Blair’s baby shower the very next day in NJ. I planned to take the 1 hour flight from NC to Philadelphia the morning after the wedding in order to make it to the shower on time. If that wasn’t hectic enough, we found out the night before the wedding, in our hotel room in Greensboro, that we were expecting our first baby!!! Probably the most eventful 3 day period thus far in my life. And what happy events they all were.

Here is a nice picture that Kyle instagrammed of us at the rehearsal dinner. This was about two hours after we got the news (it was still a secret, of course).

Here is a great shot of “the guys” at the rehearsal dinner:

and a nice shot from the wedding:

The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun. Congrats to Nick and Steph!

After about 4 or 5 hours of sleep it was time for Ilya to drop me off at the airport, as the rest of our group would be doing the 9 hour drive home. The one hour flight was incredible when compared to that drive on the way down. Oh the luxuries of modern life! My mom picked me up at the airport and we were on our way to the baby shower. I am excited to share some pictures of the decor that I made for the shower. The theme of the shower was the children’s book The Little Prince. I made the favors out of heart shaped lollipops with a quote about the heart from the book attached:


I also made this banner to go along with the theme. This was my first ever attempt at making a banner, and I was pretty excited with how it turned out!


and  I also made this banner with elephants to match the baby’s nursery theme:


Finally, I put together this little wishing tree for the baby. The one pictured here was just an example of the final product. I also brought a bunch of blank leaves, on which people wrote their wishes for the baby. Later on, I crafted those wishes into another similar tree full of everyone’s sentiments.


I know these aren’t the greatest quality pictures. By the time I arrived at the shower, my head was spinning so fast from the whirlwind of a weekend, and I was so antsy about seeing Blair arrive surprised, that I just did the best I could with capturing my crafty efforts. The shower was wonderful, and Blair was certainly surprised. Baby Abram was born just over a month later, right on time and perfectly healthy. He’s super precious and squishy. Congrats Blair and Brady!