Open Farm Day is an annual event about tightening the connection between farmers and consumers. Farmers across the province invite Nova Scotians to visit and see first-hand where our food comes from. Hannah, my mom and I went to Dempsey Corner Orchards in Aylesford (the idea is to make stops at several different farms, but with Hannah in tow it made sense to stay in one place). There were apples, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, sunflowers, corn, peaches, pears, plums - even a sandbox! The animals were mostly free to wander around the farm. We saw goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, dogs and a calf. And the weather? It was perfect.

I'm looking forward to visiting more than one farm next year, and even more as Hannah gets older. It's funny the things we take for granted, like that someone grows and picks our apples, or that blueberries grow on bushes. Living in the city, these are things that we'll have to teach Hannah, and it's a good reminder for us adults, too. Here are some photos from our day.

 

Happy Monday! xo

 

{more apples, please}

{visiting the pigs}



{happy sunflowers}

{debating which apple to try first}



{fresh from the tree is best}

{blueberry picking}

{berry picking with Grammie}

{cookie break}

{someone needs a sand box next year}

{freshly-picked apples}

{having a great time in the orchard}

{my favourite picture of the day}

I've been staring at our front lawn coming up with landscaping plans. I apparently can't focus on one project, I need to take on a few to drive myself (and Aubrey) crazy.

Our front yard is significantly better than when we first bought the house thanks to the amazing landscaping design of Bill Chandler (who I think is one of Toronto's top landscape designers) I met him because he worked on my parents back garden and he helped us with our front walkway both with designing and installation. Although Bill came up with a gorgeous planting plan in addition to the stairs and walkway, we only did the stone work because budget. You can see the evolution of the front of our house here.

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The new shed is in! We watched the two installers build it at a great pace all Wednesday. It is awesome. The next step is for me to pick a paint colour to paint it but that will wait until after the bathroom reno. (That starts in just over a week - barf) Anyhow - love the shed, and loved the installation guys. So two thumbs up.

Heartland Stratford shed  and installtion purchased at Lowes

As my business gets larger we need more room for storage in the house. It's amazing how much room business supplies and paper stock take up. That plus the increasing amount of kid stuff I'm saving means we're really lacking some serious storage room. We decided that an outdoor shed would be the answer to some storage issues. However this is our shed........

Awesome right? Granted the above picture is from 2008. The shed hasn't been replaced but in order to make it a bit nicer to look at I took some outdoor metal paint and updated it, and added a shower curtain to hide the contents of the shed... The shed has stood up well - the paint hasn't chipped since I did this in 2009 but the curtain now is looking worn, and it doesn't keep animals out. I've spotted racoons leaving the shed, which gives me the heebie jeebies. It's not a great spot for storing items. So mixed with the animal situation, the decreasing storage space in our house and increasing collection of things we want to store (like Oscar getting into bikes, and more outdoor toys) we are bitting the bullet on buying a new shed. So by bye to the old one...

We've been getting quotes from shed manufacturers and the prices were coming back around $3,000 for a shed of the size we wanted. Aubrey drove by Lowes awhile back and spotted the this shed ...

You can order it as a kit to build yourself, or, hire them to build it for you. The do it yourself cost was roughly $1,300 + tax but didn't include shingles. Comparably, for them to come and do it for us (and with shingles) we're looking at approximately $2,000. As you know, we're not opposed to the do it yourself method - but this time around we have decided to have them build it - it wasn't that big of a cost difference considering the amount of work, and the lack of time we have these days (and the upcoming bathroom reno)

And tomorrow the new one arrives. Yay! I'll have to paint the new shed myself (the quote for them to paint it was $800) so I'm sure that will be a series of posts as I fret over colours.

Ps., Don't take how we took apart the metal shed as a "how to" but it was a stress reliever - I think Aubrey had a lot of satisfaction beating it to pieces. ;) 

{Clockwise from the top-left: peas, cucumbers, yellow beans, and zuchinni, carrots and lettuce}

I spent the weekend working (my company only asks us to commit one weekend a year, so I'm not complaining) and managed to muster up just enough energy to clean the house and do some laundry when I got home late Sunday afternoon. I didn't get to check any DIY projects off my list, but starting the week with an organized house and clean clothes is totally worth it. I also picked some more peonies from our front garden, which are currently prettying up our bedroom and living room. I swear this plant only produced white flowers last year, but some are a beautiful shade of blush pink this year. Is that possible?

Above, are a few photos from our raised garden beds. Everything's up and doing well, except our green beans. I think the variety we bought takes a little longer to sprout, so I'll give it a bit more time before trying again (new cucumber plants keeping popping up, so I'm hoping the green beans just need more time).

How was your weekend?

1. Wildflowers picked from the woods behind my mom's house.
2. Also from my mom's house, these books were among the many she's been saving for my future children. The jackets may be worn, but the pages are still perfect and I love the idea of reading my child some of the very same books my parents read to me once. The ceramic elephant was a $13 impulse buy  at Homesense.
3. I was at Homesense looking for a large basket to store books and toys in the nursery. I found this one for $24.99 and it's perfect. Our cat likes hiding in it too.
4. A cold weather snap didn't stop the lettuce I planted last weekend from sprouting. So far, so good.

It rained for most of the weekend, which is usually an excuse to relax around here. We squeezed in a short visit with Adam's parents, stopped by my mom's house, ran a few errands, Adam's band played a show (I went), and we watched a few movies too. That may not sound relaxing, but it really was. I even made crepes for breakfast (my current favourite).

How was your weekend?

Back in April, I shared our plans for the yard this year. Last weekend we had some mulch and topsoil delivered, so Adam added more mulch to our flower beds (especially where we extended them) and filled our raised garden beds with soil (which he then mixed with several bags of manure).

With the danger of frost (mostly) behind us, it was finally time to plant a few new shrubs we picked up - and our garden! We've been keeping the plants outside in their pots, in the spots we plan to plant them, and bringing them inside for the night if it looked like the temperature would dip below freezing (Nova Scotia is at least a month behind Eastern Canada and the US in terms of climate, in case you're noting that you've had your plants in the ground for weeks). Since Adam was in the studio recording all weekend, my mom came to help me (as in, she did all the work while I messed around with the garden).

So what did she plant?

A couple golden euonymous shrubs...

{the larger euonymous was the same size as the two new guys when we planted it last spring}

And this pretty little shrub. I've completely forgotten the name, but it should be sporting some little yellow flowers soon.

{waiting for little yellow flowers to bloom}

Here's how that flower bed looks now:

{yes, our lawn DESPERATELY needs to be mowed - we're just waiting on a replacement part for our mower}

She also added a small spirea shrub to one of our front beds. When I looked over our plans, I realized we meant to add two of these guys, so I'm off to pick up another one soon.

In terms of our overall plans, we've made some real progress.

Side bed:
-extend bed and add new mulch
-add rocks to fill dead space
-add 2 small golden euonymous shrubs
-add divided blue hosta from front bed (we may have missed the boat on this one until the fall)
-add yellow flowering shrub

Small front bed:
-extend bed and add new mulch
-add rocks to fill dead space
-add 2 new spireas (still need to add 1)
-replace rose bush with red japanese maple
-add new holly bush

In case you thought I was just standing around watching my mom work, here's some photographic evidence of my progress in the garden. I used a measuring tape and string to plot my rows and followed the directions on my seed packets in terms of spacing (both for the rows and the seeds).

In the first bed, we're hoping to have peas, beans (yellow and green) and cucumbers:

{peas, yellow beans, green beans, cucumber}

And in the second bed, I planted zucchini, carrots and several kinds of lettuce.

{zucchini, carrots, and a whole lotta lettuce}  

We're also planning to plant several tomato and pepper transplants in containers, so wish us luck!

Did you plant a garden this year? Any tips?

Oscar's (early) 2nd Birthday gift is now in place in a little magical corner of our garden. With Oscar showing great interest in playing house the past few months with blankets and forts we thought that it would be a perfect gift for his birthday - something that was just his. My Mom and I searched websites for a few months, we saw some building plans - and although they looked super cute and building it from scratch would be lovely - the price of wood would have likely made it a non-economical choice for us, and secondly - we just didn't have the time to start building one from scratch. My Mom and I and finally found this one online at Costco.ca. for $399.99 with free delivery.

I liked the features that the body is wood, and it blends in nicely with our backyard decor. We wanted something that was imaginative for him, but would fit in nicely with our garden. I don't think that once you have kids, you have to throw your love of design out the window. This one I felt was perfect, as it is tucked into a little corner of the garden - under the trees which makes it really like a house in the woods.  Check out Oscar having a ball in the house. These photos are from when we led him outdoors to see his house for the first time.

If you're interested in playhouses and why we liked this one click on read more to see some of the features we like. Tons of photos, so I try to do the "read more" when something is pretty "photo heavy".

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This picture (of bagged leaves) pretty much sums up my weekend. The good news is that in addition to raking, I also managed to see Adam's band play a show for the Halifax Pop Explosion, go out for breakfast at one of my favourite spots, watch a really terrible movie (Love and Other Drugs) and make a delicious dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday. The bad news is that the raking isn't done yet.

In between raking, Adam and I also started to build raised beds for next year's garden. We learned a lot planting our first garden this year, especially that we need a location with more sunlight. So we decided to create two raised beds in the middle of our yard, which has the added bonus of giving us (really Adam) slightly less area to mow. We purchased some spruce boards at Home Depot and had them cut down to make two 4' by 6' frames. Adam sunk three screws into each side and voila, we had our frames.

The next step is to level the frames by removing some of the sod, so we won't have any drainage issues when we plant our garden in the spring. The frames are 10 inches deep (you need about 6 inches for a veggie garden) and we'll use newspaper to cover and smother the grass, then add the soil from last year's garden on top. We're also going to try forking some shredded leaves into the soil, which will help attract earthworms and other good-for-the-garden organisms come spring (or it will do nothing, either way we've got leaves to spare).

I think we're going to try making leaf mould for next year, which sounds disgusting but is actually a really good organic compost. From what I've read, you just store leaves in black garbage bags for a year or so, and I really like the idea of putting our leaves to work instead of just getting rid of them. Have you ever tried it? Any advice?