My Garden Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago You Grow Girl, a blog that I follow, had a contest to win Gayla Trail's new book  Grow Great Grub.  I did not find it necessary to enter the contest, since my wonderful husband got it for me for Valentine's day, but I thought the contest still sounded like fun.

To win a copy of the book, you post a link to a picture or website or something that is your latest gardening inspiration...what makes you itch to get out there, dig in the dirt, and grow stuff?

Here are pictures of my garden inspiration... my backyard :)

I know that may look like a lot of snow, but the fact that you can see those two steps is a sure sign spring is coming... the snow is melting!  At least until we get another storm.  Anyway, that raised area the steps lead up to is where I hope to build a garden.  We will pretty much have to start from scratch but that's ok.  I wonder what the soil is like...the whole thing is such a blank canvas of gardening possibilities that its almost overwhelming, but I am excited to be able to grow my own food.

I also am going to try to do some vegetables in containers, especially my lettuce and spinach, since I am dubious about my ability to keep my dog and her mischief out of my veggies.  Salad greens would be a likely target for her to help me "water."

A few more pictures about things that make me excited to grow stuff:

This is one of the 4 or 5 rosebushes we inherited when we bought the house.  I need to figure out how to take good care of them, because how awesome would it be to decorate my house with fresh cut roses!

I will take pictures of them when the blossom and we find out what color(s) they are.  I think at least two of the bushes are those really pretty yellow one with pink edges, and maybe one is white.

These are two downspouts on the backside of our house.  I hope to put two rainbarrels there to collect water to water my garden, especially now that we have a water bill.  Not that water is too expensive, but why not save if you can, right?

Plus there's some rumor going around that some government agency in Iowa has this idea to have Iowans put out rain barrels so that we can collet 1 million gallons of rain water to cut down on spring flooding.  I'm not sure how well that's going to work or what the long term impact will be for the rest of the spring and summer, but I do know that Iowa has some major flooding problemos.  But what happens when the rain barrels are full?  So many questions...so few answers.

Well, that's my garden inspiration for now.  According to the Old Farmers' Almanac we have a 50% chance of being frost free after April 26th.   If I use that as the last frost date, that means some of my plants should go in the ground the weekend after Easter.  I just have a really hard time believing that the ground will be thawed by then...oh well, I guess its just another lesson in patience.