My New Garden

We've been in our house in Delaware for three weeks today and it is feeling more like home every day now! We were really good about unpacking everything right away to not drag out the dreaded unpacking process longer than it had to be -- okay, this was boyfriend's idea since I love to procrastinate.  It was a great decision though since we're now able to spend free time exploring the area, not dealing with house stuff.

Philadelphia is only about 45 minutes away without traffic, so we've visited the city twice already (more Philly stories to come in another blog soon) and we are also making use of our Delaware State Park pass we purchased.  It's really nice having so many state parks and other parks around the area, so we are trying to go as much as possible.

One of the first things I wanted to do when we moved in was to plant a garden.  Ever since starting to garden in Ethiopia, and planting seeds again last year in Atlanta, I'm hooked.  Before leaving Atlanta in April I even replanted my garden from last year for my mom to take care of and enjoy!

The Atlanta garden all planted.

Arbay was thirsty from helping me garden ;)

My mom's picture update: the garden is growing!

Within a week of moving in I had planted some flowers in front of the house to make it more cheery! I'm not so skilled with flower gardens, so my mom advised me on some of the flowers that might work well.  Here is how it turned out:

Perfect, I thought!

However, we've discovered that it rains here, a lot. I mean almost every day. Seriously, a lot of rain.  And, we've discovered that the gutter in the front leaks, right onto my flower garden!

Can you see the huge puddle that forms?

For now, I've moved the flowers back towards the house a bit.  But it isn't looking good for our flower garden.  Oh well, at least I tried.  My real pet project, however, was the vegetable garden.  It took me a couple weeks to get motivated to start digging in the hard soil, but I finally got out the shovel last weekend.  The soil is very different since I'm used to Georgia red clay and here it is very sandy.  With a little manure mixture I hope the soil will do just fine for my vegetables though!  After a long Saturday of digging, here are my new beds for planting.

The Delaware garden.

I just put seeds in the ground on Sunday, and ever since it has rained every day, which is good, however the sun has only peaked through the clouds once or twice.  I'll be sure to update as things start growing.

Now I'm off to continue planning my trip to Turkey.  I leave in less than a week now for about two weeks in Turkey. I'll write soon about that adventure :)