We’re a little behind schedule when it comes to our garden this year.

It’s not really our fault either.   The weather has been unseasonably cold and damp here. I would have loved to have start my garden from seed, but life was just too busy for me to get to it.

We made our annual trek to our favorite local greenhouse and I picked out veggies to plant in our two 4’x4′ raised beds:  2 cherry tomato plants, 6 hybrid tomato plants, 2 kohlrabi, 10 broccoli plants, and 26 bush bean plants.  I also planted an area of carrots from seed (should be about 100 carrots in all).  I skipped zucchini this year.  While I love fresh zucchini, I just can’t seem to keep up with the abundance of zucchini.  I’m sure I can find someone who wants to get rid of their surplus, or else I can pick some up at the local farmers’ market.

So on the very day I got my veggies planted, just as I was about to get ready for bed,   I saw the weather on the evening news: Frost warning!  FROST!  On June 1!!  So I was out in the dark covering up plants. And I had to cover them again later in the week because of a threat of frost! Ridiculous.

Well, at least the broccoli should like this cool weather.

Once again, we’ve set the goal of landscaping in our front of our house.  This is a project that we have put off for, oh, about 8 years.  This project keeps slipping off the to-do list – either because the summer gets away from us, something comes up that removes it from the budget, or we just get paralyzed by doing a task that seems beyond our skill set.

Two years ago a dear friend of mine divided her hostas and brought seven of them to me.  I planted them along the foundation of the house and they look great.  That is literally, all we have done in the eight years we have lived here.

In an effort to push the landscaping project forward, I signed up for a garden design class at the local greenhouse.  The class itself was $25, but you get a $10 off coupon if you spend $50 or more by July.  (Pretty easy to do when you have a big project in the works).

The class was two hours and there were only three people (including myself) in the class.  A garden designer went over the basics of good garden design and then spent about 25 minutes with each of us going over our own unique situations.  We got to share photos of our garden site, discuss the size of the space,  amount of sunlight, type of soil, etc., and then she made recommendations for design and implementation of the design.  The information was extremely helpful.

We now have a clear idea of what needs to be done with the front area of our home.  Now we just need to pick out what specific perennials and shrubs we want.  Thanks to the class, I have a few ideas on what those will be.  I’m hoping that by the time we get the area prepped in the next couple of weeks, there will still be some selection left at the greenhouse…. and more importantly, I hope the price will be right!

So those thriving hostas will most likely get moved, but I think the new design will be a big improvement.

In the meantime, I’m hoping my veggies continue to grow and that the wild raspberry bushes in my neighborhood will start producing.

How is your garden growing?