A rose is a rose is a rose...

Of those seven rose bushes I planted back a few months ago, only 4 have come out of their dormant stage. I was a little disappointed that one of them was from gurneys but, two out of three ain't bad I guess. The Wal*mart bare roots roses are holding steady at two for four. I'm going to give the duds a few more weeks and then replace them.

But! How exciting is this!



A small hint at success...

Baby Bemis' quilt

I posted earlier how I had finally jinxed one of my girlfriends into getting pregnant. Yay! And thankfully, it was a married one. In fact, her little man is due very near to she and her husband's second anniversary.

Anyway, I ordered some adorable Michael Miller fabric that I think is going to be just perfect for a little boy. It has titles like "Honk, Honk" and "Beep, Beep". I also ordered some super soft minky fabric to go on the back.

This weekend I was able to get started cutting and piecing the quilt top.





I'm about two-thirds into the quilting and hopefully will be able to wrap it up tonight. Its amazing how fast a crib size quilt goes together. I'm only about 4 hours into it, taking my sweet time, and I've probably only got another 2 hours before its ready for hand binding.

Garden Improvement - Raised Garden Beds!

After last year's vegetable garden resulted in... semi-production? I knew I had to do something different. My plants just weren't performing at peak. Granted, this may have been due to the record high heat and long periods without rain. However, I felt the real issue was my crappy top soil and I was determined that this year would be better.

I decided that even if I broke the bank I was putting in raised garden beds. I had a year to think about how I wanted to do this and how to be the most cost effective. I did some internet research. I poked through my back issues of Better Homes and Gardens. And I did a little brainstorming. After all, 2.5 years of architecture school has to be good for something. After all, I didn't go to all the work and inconvenience of my dining room table looking like a potting bench for months as seen here:



Just to have another lackluster harvest.

And so, I decided my best course of action with my minimal budget was simply 2 x 8 x 10's cut in half by the wonderful people at Lowe's and nailed together with angle brackets. Add a few bags of garden soil, manure, and the compost I had saved from last year and hopefully... this year will see marked improvement. *Fingers crossed*

I started with this:


What a weedy mess!

And then there was this:



Then I decided that I wanted to add a third bed for a cutting garden. I love having flowers in the house and while I usually get a pretty good deal at the grocery store, it would be nice to have enough flowers in my own yard to cut my own. And so, here we are:



I still have some border to install and more gravel but its starting to look like the real deal. My mom even commented that it looked a little Williamsburg-esque when she visited. Quite the compliment. :)