I've moved!

Look for me at agardenofmyown.com

Compost Rules!

Last week I ordered a compost bin from Home Depot. It showed up yesterday and we put it together last night. Yay for compost!

I've always been a little intimidated by the rules for making my own compost. If you look around the internet you can find some really complicated instruction for owning a compost bin. This is so sad. It makes the average gardener feel that they need a degree in horticulture to even try it. So, me being me, I jumped in with both feet and bought my own bin. So far I've added some old pansies that I pulled up last week, a few kitchen scraps, and some sod that we pulled up over the weekend. I'll keep you posted as to how easy/hard this whole compost adventure really is.


I just thought this pepper was really cool...

Hot Summer Days in the Garden

Not too much to report from the garden. It's hot and humid, and the plants are loving it! We are on the brink of a veggie explosion...I can't wait.

8X8

There's a challenge right now among Bloggers called 8X8. Go to your computer and under My Pictures choose the 8th photo in the 8th file...Here's mine!


This is a photo of Dana and Allen at the Prettyboy Resevoir tree planting a couple of years ago. We had a great time that day!

Where's the Garden?

I must say that I do like the cable channel HGTV. It's fun to see people transform their homes from dumpy to divine. I also love the voyeuristic shows on house-hunting...these are fun shows...however...you know what's coming...where's the gardening on Home and GARDEN TV? There's several shows where they do some expensive landscaping, or paint the front of someone's house and add a new mailbox. Is this gardening? No. In fact, HGTV has only one gardening show, as far as I can tell. It's Gardening By the Yard. This is a fun and informative show on the act of gardening...it comes on once a week at 6:30 in the morning...so what's a gardener to do?

Enter Create TV. This is a PBS channel that has programming on cooking, travel, home improvement, and GARDENING. I haven't seen all of the shows yet, but Create TV's website boasts such shows as Cultivating Life, GardenSMART, Gardenstory: Inspiring Spaces Healing Places, P. Allen Smith's Garden Home, Smart Gardening, and The Victory Garden. It appears they show one gardening show each day, repeating four or five times over a 24 hour period. So, if you are looking for some REAL gardening shows, not landscaping shows, flip the channel over to Create TV. And when your friends ask if you watched last night's episode of the Bachelorette, you can hold your head up high and proudly announce that no, in fact you were watching something really good on PBS...

UPDATE: Two days after I posted this, Cox Cable elected to stop carrying Create TV. Crap...

Pesto...it's what's for dinner

My basil is already bursting out of it's pot! Well, okay, not literally. But, it is ready to be used. So, tonight we are having the first pesto dinner of the season.

Here's my recipe:

2 cups fresh basil
1/4 cup pine nuts (walnuts work well if you can't find pine nuts)
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

In a food processor pulse the basil, pine nuts, garlic, salt, and pepper until finely chopped. With the food processor running, drizzle the oil into the mixture until smooth and thick. Stir in the cheese by hand.

2 cups of basil might seem a lot, and it is if you purchase basil at your local grocery store. This is the reason why I grow my own basil and why we only have pesto in the summer.

Fun fact: Cutting back your basil just stimulates more growth. So, the more you use it, the more you will have.

Buon Appetito!

On Your Mark...

Get set...GARDEN!

Memorial Day is almost here, and you know what that means...gardening season is here! Actually, here in the Tidewater area, I've been digging in the garden since early April. I've planted trees, shrubs, and flowers of all kinds...I've even repurposed an unsuccessful flowerbed with some grass seed...This is going to be a great summer for gardening!

On a related note, I've decided to make my passion into my career...I'll be studying Horticulture at the local college this Fall! I realize those of you that heard me talk about Interior Design as a career will be surprised by this revelation, and all I can say is that I'd rather wear jeans and no makeup to work than heels and lipstick...it's who I am.