Workin' Hard in the Garden

Way back in the spring I planted some flowers from my mother-in-law's garden. I love how they have been growing and blooming.

Unfortunately, the garden as a whole has not been looking all that great. Living on a rental property, the yard can get neglected. Remember when Courtney tackled her garden? Well, now it was my turn. I had a half day at work and so I knew I needed to start some gardening. Here is my garden and yard before I started work.

Armed with gloves, a trowel and a lot of water, I started to pull out weeds. Everything was going great until I got stung by this guy.

My arm started to swell up right away. Of course, it was Mom to the rescue. She suggested baking soda and water to stop the swelling. It worked like a charm and I was back to cleaning up my yard.

Four hours later the yard looked like this.

I decided to keep these little purple flowers along the path to the back door. I'm not sure if they are weeds or not, but they looked pretty!

Happy Gardening,

PS: Here's where we link up.

Gardening on the May Long Weekend

As Kristin mentioned yesterday, this weekend was the May Long Weekend, aka Victoria Day. My parents made the drive to come visit me, and very kindly helped me with a couple of projects which I'll share with you over time. But today I will share with you the little gardening project that my mom helped me sort out.

There aren't any before pictures that I have to share with you, but if you close your eyes and picture a big pile of weeds, completely covering the ground, you've gotten the picture. To recap, I'm in a little rental apartment with no front yard to speak up, but with a little area of dirt. It seems the previous tenants tried to turn it into a rock garden, but it didn't quite work, and the weeds had taken over.

My mom kindly lent me her gardening expertise and we headed to the Home Depot gardening centre and picked up two hostas...

and a flat of 12 marigolds.

The hardest part was digging out the weeds, and the rocks. Boy did I end up with quite the collection. I saved two to go back into the garden, for a little decorative detail, and my mom chose two for herself.

Then we quickly dug holes for the marigolds and hostas to go in, watered them, and covered the area with black mulch before the rain came (good time, eh?).

I'll let you know later into the summer how this area is going. It gets a lot of direct sunlight so I'm hoping with some constant watering the plants with thrive!

Did you tackle any of your own gardening projects this weekend?

Happy Gardening,

PS: Here's where we link up.