A little springtime madness. I mean loveliness.

I don't know how many of you garden, but I do. And I love it. I didn't always love it. One time, not so long ago, I could easily kill a cactus in as little as a week. My grandma Betty (GB is her cute little nickname) is an avid gardener. Flowers, veggies, trees, grass: you name it she could grow it. And whatever she grew, turned out amazing.

GB tried to turn my thumb green for as long as I remember. And me being the ever-so-respecting granddaughter, merely nodded and went off to hang with the boys. (Because I kinda like to do boy things. As I'm sure you've notice, hence the beer guzzling, hunting, 7-hour hiking, etc.)  Eventually, that gardening thing kinda grew on me. (Ha ha, I'm hilarious.) I started small, with pots on my little college apartment balcony. Those died quickly. But then Ryan and I bought our first house and GB took every opportunity she had to fill up my trunk with more clippings than I knew what to do with.  I asked a thousand questions, and her reply was, "oh, you'll figure it out." And what do you know, year 4 is upon us in our beautiful home and my gardens are doing splendid.

I'm addicted now. And with the price of veggies hitting the freaking roof, I have all the more reason to grow my own produce. (I 'can' the produce also, but that's a whole nother blog post.)

My mother was never a gardener. My dad, Mike, was though. (Note: I had two dads. One biological, Martin who's still with us, and one step-dad, Mike. Both are/were equally important to me. Just in case someone gets corn-fused. There I go again. lol.) He loved to grow veggies. The last year he was with us, he wanted a garden soooo bad. And of course, mom was like, "whatever you want, Mike." So he got his garden (which was three times the size of mine).  I'll never forget when we went shopping for the plants. Every time I turned around he had loaded another 26 plants in the cart. I mean, he was having a hard time getting around at that point, but he could sure zip around that garden shop like a 2 year old that just chugged an energy drink.  I asked him, in the middle of him putting MORE plants in the already overflowing cart, "Mike, what the heck are you going to do with 12 green pepper plants? I mean really man, 12?" He just replied with this shit-eating grin on his face, "I'm gonna plant 'em." The plants did get planted, but by my mother, who was none too thrilled. And produce did get picked, by me, who was ecstatic.

Anyway, it was a beautiful spring day today, so I decided to get a head start in cleaning out my garden beds. And I've been noticing a few bloggers posting unfortunate exercise accidents, i.e. skinned knuckles while running on a treadmill (still think that's hilarious, in a good way), scrapped palms, etc. So I thought I'd share my scratched up skin with you all.  Lucky you.  Hey, gardening is vicious.



Check out that bat-wing.
You'd think being a pro photographer I could have done a better job.



How you get scratches on the back of your shoulder is beyond me.
Only I can pull off something that ridiculous.

I ended up getting all but one of my beds in the backyard cleaned up, I turned my compost, and spread dried grass clippings from last year on my veggie garden. All that deserved a few brewskies. Hellooo chilled Bud Light. 
I am now in the best mood.

Here's a few pictures of my garden from past years.



My first veggie garden. And Wyatt (who loves to walk through the garden.)



First veggie garden mid-season.



Flower bed by the deck/chairs my mom made me (aren't they killer!)/and Wyatt.

 

Another flower bed with a bench my Grandpa Jack made me. And Wyatt.

 There's a theme to those pics, huh? A big yellow canine. Surprise, surprise.

Any of you garden?  I love to talk 'garden', so if any of you want to email me with tips or tricks or advice, or if you want me to give advice (not that it'd be any good) just give me a holla!

Later gators!