The Usual Lame Introductary Post

A year ago my husband, Eric, and I purchased a house from my sister and brother-in-law. The main reason was we wanted a yard for our dog, Lucky.

Well, we now have a yard in spades - 3/4 acre lot with 3 raised garden beds, several perennial beds, the works. The first year we had the house we decided to let things grow as normal and take notes to see what we'd like to change. Fortunately that list wasn't too long, so we've started tackling it this year.

We also went easy on the gardening, just planting a dozen plants in one of the garden beds. This year we're planting all three of them using companion planting.

Our overall goal is to maintain the yard and gardens as organically as we can. On the whole we're succeeding, though we lost the battle when sawflies attacked our Mugo pine and we discovered our lawn was primarily crabgrass and creeping charlie (that'll be another post).

Our second goal is to keep the plantings as pet (and kid) friendly as possible. When things started coming up last year, we realized that one of the plants was rhubarb, which is highly toxic to dogs and got ripped out quickly. This year we spent a lot of time picking out perennials that are non-toxic and can even be beneficial for pet health.

With all the changes going on this year, Eric mentioned he wanted to put together a journal to record them. So, here it is.