Gardening – Page 2 – Notefull Living

Buy Local Plants

Help your local community It’s April and planting season is here. In the Fraser Valley it is anyways.

Here’s the deal, I’ll admit I have been just as stressed as everyone with this world wide pandemic with COVID 19. I need to still keep myself in a place of balance and not get my mind stuck on what’s happening.

When life is stressful, I garden.

If I can help be of a voice on my small piece of the internet today is the day to do so.

Chatting with a friend a few weeks ago we talked about “what’s deemed essential”.

My friend and I agreed that we see Gardening as essential.

Buying Local

I stopped in a Tanglebank today as I needed to buy a gift for a friend. Don’t worry the kids were in the car with the windows open and they loved being goofy while mom shopped.

Support your local Garden Centers and buy some seeds and plants

If I think back on it, I don’t buy a ton of plants as I grow lots of my own stuff or save seeds or split plants when I can. My gardening goals are to grow a lot of my own food. I would love to teach it to my kids.

That would include shopping the local garden centers to do it.

While at Tanglebank today another costumer showed up and they had his order all ready to go for PICKUP. Still available to serve their customers and the tired cooped up mom like me!

I have 2 other options if going to the stores isn’t an option. I know lots of stores are hustling to get into online ordering.

Ordering Plants Online

I recently heard of this new website that’s exclusive to BC and Canada. Buying Canadian helps boost our economy and I think it’s safe to say “GO BUY CANADIAN AS MUCH AS YOU CAN”.

Considering I want to add more to my plants into my home and I have a near finished patio I have my eye on a couple plants from this company.

Check out Curb Appeal Plants

I must admit I’m getting a little tired of my rescued plant that I combined from Christmas planters I was given one year. Plus I would rather have real lavender, not dollar store sprigs. I kinda killed the lavender plant I have by moving it too much. Oops.

Home and Garden Swap

Here’s another option. Over a week ago I asked on my Instagram and made a video asking “How can I help you?” So many in my life right now are being affected by loss of job and so forth. It’s very hard to sit back and watch this happening.

When looking at the world and living with a bigger picture, it would be WONDERFUL if I could help in a BIG way but at this time that isn’t possible.

With being a stay at home mom and having this blog as a creative outlet, my best way that I can serve my community and help is hosting a Home and Garden Swap.

Home and Garden swap is setting up a community drop box outside of your home.

Home and Garden Swap (1)

Members of your community can drop off seeds and plants they don’t need or have extra’s off. Others can come along and pick up plants to get their garden started. I see this as a way to help my community get gardening or grow their garden.

This box can be made with anything your have in your home. I used my stencils and paints from my crafting supplies and re-purposed an old garden planter.

How to start your own community box: It’s easy to host a Facebook event and let people know the location and just update the event as new plants arrive or leave. I started lots of my gardening by swapping.

Contact me if you want to get an event started in your community. I have a graphic you can use and some helpful tips to got you started.

This post is written to my Canadian friends all over Canada.

Reading this and not Canadian? I hope this encourages your to buy local in your community/country.

Starting a Garden – Planting Seeds

Starting a garden If it’s your first time planting a Garden or you have planted many, I hope this posts gives you some helpful tips.

Is it too late to start a Garden? Nope. I live in the Fraser Valley on the outskirts of Vancouver BC Canada and we are considered Zone 8. We are in a rich area for growers and lots of gardening centers because of our great growing climate.

Truthfully, I’ve started mine even later then March and even had to restart some plants several times due to deer eating my stuff. I still got a good harvest at the end of the season.

Buying/Organizing Seeds

I see buying seeds like grocery shopping. Find seeds that are similar to veggies you would buy or herbs. Some are easy to grow, others can be picky. I’ll be completely honest and have had many gardening fails. But, that’s how we learn.

My seeds are a collection from seeds I have saved from Harvest or seeds from my mom’s garden or seeds I bought. I’ve gotten seeds in a gift exchange and even got seeds from church.

Easy DIY – Seed Markers

Re-purpose an empty plastic container and cut them into strips and use Permanent Marker to write your plant names on them. Shown in picture above and seen in video in this post.
Hopefully they don’t get destroyed and can be useful for years to come!

Prepping Seed Containers

Use what you have. Even if it’s a egg carton. Get creative, seeds will grow in rich soil and they aren’t picky how fancy the container is that they grow in. I’ve re-purposed containers I saved from times. I bought starter plants when I didn’t have time to start seeds and have saved the holders to use as seed starters.

I grabbed soil from my Raised Garden Beds and filled up the containers. Something I forgot to do in this picture was moisten my soil.

Yup, I’ll say it again, get the soil wet. FYI I bought my gardening gloves from the dollar store a couple years ago.

I made a hole with my finger to make a nice spot for the seeds to go in.

Planting Seeds

I love this photo. Popping open seeds pods that I let dry on the vine from last year is something that’s exciting to see what’s inside.

Pretty straight forward to drop the seed in the hole you made and cover it up with soil.

Not all seeds will grow, I usually drop at least 2 seeds per spot

Mini Greenhouses – Encouraging seeds to start

Keeping it real and again, using what I have. A plastic container, vacuum bag and my window. Anyway I can to encourage the seeds to grow. I usually put it in my greenhouse and check on them if they are watered. This year the frost is still here in the mornings.

I can’t end this post here and just say “Happy Planting”.

Bonus Tip – Community Outreach

My heart has been heavy with the current world state. I see bloggers I’ve connect with here online in full on Quarantine. My husband and I are blessed he’s still working and we are not affected by job loss. Many are loosing their jobs here in Canada with COVID 19 outbreak happening.

With having young kids and we are taking the government order very seriously to stay home. I would love to reach out and help my community in any way I can.

I created a Garden Swap Box.

I took an old planter box that was made for a Garden Party a couple years ago. I don’t have a fancy word making machine.
I used my stencils and pre-planned my words on paper.
Using a Foam Brush I painted the words on.

Here’s how it turned out.

While the kids painted I painted too. I asked a neighbor if I could put it out on his corner of his yard. I put a plastic container with some seeds in unopened seed packages that I won’t be using and some pots to get people started. Not sure who will use it.

Have you started seeds?

What are you planning to plant in your garden this year?

Living on One Income

One Income I cried today.

I need to pause my regular home/garden content and talk about something important.

Real day in the Life post for you today. Since this outbreak here in Canada and the mad scramble for the grocery store, we’ve been OK.

Store was out of wipes – I told my husband to buy cloth ones.
Store was out of bread – I baked a batch.
Just recently I pulled out and organized my “home school” supplies. No, we don’t home school. BUT my son has missed SO many WEEKS of school this year. Plus homeschooling has been heavy on my heart and mind this year, as of today, now I know why.

Uncertain times have been a reality for my Husband and I. I would be lying if I said life was a breeze. I can share all the cute pictures I want of our home and make my blog seem super attractive but there the real life realities that our family faces ALL the time.

Living on ONE income and how we did it!

We are not alone with the worldly reality of what’s happening and not sure about our financial future. Thing is, I feel like to some degree because of our past experience with uncertain times it’s not hitting us like walking into a brick wall like it used to.

In 2014 we came to the realization I needed to stay home. Prior to this in 2012 BOTH my husband and I dealt with uncertain Job positions and felt the biggest blow when he learned the shop he was working for was closing and the job I had worked at prior to my mat leave didn’t have a position for me to go back to.

We have a saying in our family “God Provides”

I’ll share more about how that situation ended.

I’m not a financial guru, just sharing how we KEEP living on ONE income. Writing this in no particular order. This is my own personal experience.

1: Family Haircuts – YES I cut EVERYONE’S hair in our family of 5. Our guess was saving us $800 a year doing this. That figure is based on the most basic/ cheapest haircut we could all get in town.

2: I DON’T spend money on is my nails done, hair dyed, wax, spray tan…Whatever it is that most women treat themselves on I see as a waste of money and just don’t spend money on it. Remember this is my own personal opinion, comment isn’t meant to offend anyone.

3: Hang Dry laundry – I did the math, $500 in savings on my mat leave (2012) for the entire year.

4: Cloth Diapers – Even if you’re doing this 50% of the time, your still saving money. Worth the time and energy that goes into it.

5: Vegetable Gardening – More to share about this in the coming weeks. Still eating fresh/frozen food from last year.

6: Take a vehicle OFF the road. If one of you can walk or bike to work, sell a vehicle or take the vehicle off the road.

7: Sell stuff – This past Sept we sold over $1,000 of stuff we had laying around our home.

8: Baking – Have you seen how expensive packaged snacks are for school?? Between this and cloth diapering is a HUGE savings on our grocery bill.

9: Accept hand me down clothes. I grew up with this as a kid. I was blessed pretty early on with hand me downs for my kids. I make sure to pay it forward once my kids grow out the clothes. Friends and I do clothing swaps all the time since our kids are close in size. Notice I said “Accept”. I don’t focus on fashion, it’s not worth the cost. From what we get for our kids I think they look pretty good all things considered.

10: Buy Local food. With doing most of the above buying local meat and produce is affordable. We buy a lot more higher quality food. It comes down to healthier choices with what we put in our bodies. I’m someone who struggles with my gut health. Making this switch, not so many flair ups anymore.

11: DIY – This applies to ALL areas of our home. Vehicles – My husband is a mechanic. Home Decor, Plumbing, Drywall, Painting a room for example. Almost all of our construction stuff in our house we do. With the exception of needing professionals when it’s above what we can do.

12: Gardening and Lawn Maintenance. This seems like a common sense item to me. BUT, with the amount of small lawn companies that frequent our neighborhood I know lots of people get their properties cared for.

13: Rent Equipment: If we don’t own the equipment to do a small job, instead of hiring we rent it.

14: Date Night in – PUT THE PHONES DOWN…Play a game, invite another couple over to play a game night for example.

15: Shop clearance, deals, sales or always look second hand. This has saved us tons of money. My husband actually can’t stand that I’m a roadside picker upper. Yup, if it’s worth it, then I stop. FYI – A chunk of my gardening pots I acquired this way.

16: Side Hustles: Direct Sales with Arbonne and THIS BLOG! I recently made the change to have ads.

I could keep going or expand more on any of these topics. I’m not a financial blogger and there’s many great blogs or books to read. This is just a list of how we do it. It is still tight to live on one income.

Seeing as how much people ask me to be a part of stuff that costs money to do, tells me they think we got it figured out.

It takes lots of communication between my husband and I and not giving in to our kids. At the end of the day we lean on our Faith. God Provides. Doesn’t mean we don’t need to spring into action and get creative when your income gets cut in half.

It’s happened a few times to us. Each time we’ve just gotten smarter.

Back to our story: In 2012, my husband legit walked back into his old job. I scrambled to find work in a different school district and found childcare. Our story keeps working out again and again.

Hope seeing our list of what we do with living on one income is helpful.

Share in the comments of other tips that are helpful to you!

Staying Home – For longer then expected

Sounds like people are needing to stay home for longer then they expect lately. If your not sick and bored, I’m sharing some ways I make the most of my time at home.

No, seriously, You can only binge your shows and social media for so long and your gonna need to do something to pass the time.

Since I’ve been in the “Staying Home” for my everyday living for the last 6 years I feel like I’ve gotten good at making the most of it. This is just a small sample of what I do.

Update Decor

Being a Home and Garden blogger I get the opportunity to share about our home. Home for me as a kid was growing up in a true FARMHOUSE. Not a modern home with some country farm accents.

But, now that’s me living in a 40 year old home adding Farmhouse accents.

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I need to update the winter photo on my wall. Something I can do online from home without going out in public is ordering new a new picture to update that frame. I will be putting in the Mexican sunrise. Not a lot of money to do a simple update.

I got out my simple Spring Decor the other day and put out my upcycled table runner from trimming my bedroom curtains. I still need to sew the one straight edge and it’s done.

Deep Cleaning

Once the flu hits your house at any time of the year we all hit cleaning mode. It’s not just the “hey, we are getting company” kinda clean.

I mean lets dust and move furniture around and DEEP clean. I’ve been doing my oven, fridge, kids toys, borrowing a carpet shampooer.

My intense Carpet cleaning MIGHT have something to do with our new family addition. Thankfully Potty training accidents are far and few between now. We made sure our carpet cleaner was specifically the kind that helps them not pee again and again in the same area. Only happened twice that she went in the same spot.

Purging and Organizing

If you follow me on Instagram I’ve been getting into my closest and putting away the winter gear. There’s been thrift store drop offs and recycling. I think you get the drift. You know your home and what needs to be done. If not there’s tons of great organizing videos online to get you motivated.

Anyone else binge watch organizing videos?

Yard Work

Something I’ve noticed is lots of new houses they do now is properties with less maintenance. Not our place. I’ve been out in our yard getting it cleaned up since early February. I’ve made a HUGE dent and got our kids toys cleaned up so our puppy doesn’t get into something she shouldn’t. Plus it looks so much better having a cleaned up backyard.

It looks SUPER different now. Wait for the after photo…coming soon this spring.

Baking

I’m a big homebody and making homemade food, especially if I have time is well appreciated.

BUT….

Then baking goes sideways and I burnt the cookies.

The upside to the burnt cookie moment. Life was super busy at that moment. I came home for a girls night to find my husband rolling cookies and making them BETTER then I ever have. I had too bake for 2 classes for the next day and when I burnt the cookies it derailed my day.

I’m not perfect and neither is our home. I can share all the lovely photos I want. Sometimes we burn the cookies.

Last but not least. I still attempt to make time for…

DIY

I sew or make home decor whenever I can get a free moment. Which almost feels like never. BUT, just like many other people in the world…We are supposed to be in social isolation. That means, my sewing machine is coming out. So is my paint brush. I can’t wait to share more about that in upcoming posts.

Oh yes, can’t forget about Gardening. But that’s gets it’s own posts on my blog. More to come about that here soon.

How do you spend your days at home?

Vegetable Gardening

Vegetable Gardening It’s March, the official day of spring is coming up very soon. I hope my posts about my gardening is helpful to you in your own gardening projects. As going into this new direction with my blog with my niche of Home and Garden I have so much to catch up on it feels like.

Vegetable Gardening!

Best part about growing your own Vegetable Garden is eating FRESH food! Here’s a picture of our own green beans and the lovely pork chops from the pig we bought this past year.

However, if there is something that I share and post that you want me to expand on please comment below so I can get that information on my blog and share it with others.

Vegetable gardening is something my family and my husbands family for years. My mom is known for her front yard garden. I hear about it lots from people who know my parents. Lots of what I have comes from my family and my mother in law.

If you saw my Garden/Backyard Planning post you will see what used to be on our yard.

Before the Raised Garden beds went in last spring this was what my garden used to look like before I harvested in August.

This was a lot of work to maintain. I love how this looks, especially with the arch from our wedding. I updated it and painted it years ago. It got twisted up in a storm and I had to get rid of it sadly.

I mentioned in my Raised Garden Beds post about one negative and that is not being able to grow squash. In the picture above you can see how big the plants are in this picture.

I had an amazing harvest this particular year and plan to grow another squash garden again. If your starting out vegetable gardening this is one easy vegetable to grow.

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For more ideas on easy vegetables to grow, check out Tara’s blog on 8 Easy Vegetables to grow. Thanks Tara for including me.

Here’s what I grow in my Garden:

Pole Beans – Family Favorite – Using seeds from my grandparents.
Snap Peas – Our kids eat these off the vine for a snack
Kale – Again – seeds I get from my mom.
Zucchini
Rhubarb
Herbs – Maggie, Chives, Parsley, Basil etc…
Radishes
Garlic
White onion

I mentioned failing at things. When we bought our place I got to take on the harvest of the previous owner. She had LOADS of tomatoes in the greenhouse. I got, potatoes and so much more. I was so overwhelmed with unpacking I gave LOTS away.

I worked in a vegetable farm after high school and I knew right away these tomatoes never had their suckers pinched.

Since this abundant time I have only used this as a started house. We have changed out the soil and I need to test it to find out what’s wrong with the soil. I can only grow stuff in pots at this point.

Again, as I embark on this new direction as a Home and Garden Blogger, please let me know what you would like me to write more about. Comment below

Raised Garden Beds

If your considering Raised Garden Beds click on this post to see how we made ours and the how they work for our Garden.

Raised Garden Beds In my last post I shared about Garden/Backyard Planning. I mentioned how it takes time.

Planning also has to do with learning what works for your yard and how you want to do things.

I had a big problem on my hands. I tried growing a garden the traditional way with just rotter tiling a section of our yard. We had issue after issue with doing this. Yes, I borrowed my parents machine from their acreage.

I was HOPING have the dirt rotated with a good machine would help. It didn’t.

My husband and I like to keep things fairly neat, tidy and organized. I will admit not everything is, but when it came to the outside having clean lines it looks great. Considering invasive plants, potatoes growing rampant and loads of rocks we decided last year to put in Raised Garden Beds.

Worth all the hard work that went into making them.

Here’s a snapshot of the garden BEFORE we did the Raised Garden Beds.

I shudder looking back at this. You can see if you zoom in, I have a few things planted BUT, the weeds and such would not stop persisting.

This decision was the best one we made for this area of our city lot.

Here’s the beginnings of the Raised Garden Beds.

These did not take long to make. Our middle son jumped right into it and helped us out. I have to admit, my husband did most of the work. I helped load the wood. I don’t have the dimensions at this moment, I’ll edit this post and add it back in later.

2 truck loads of a Garden Blend, filled the boxes up just right. I was off the start my planting for the season.

This was one project we didn’t research, and just went with it. Here’s a recap of how our Raised Garden did last year.

Here’s the list of positives for having Raised Beds:

Required less work – Beds has less weeds and where easy to reach to get the ones that did grow.
Needed less watering – They act like GIANT flower pots. I noticed our water bill went DOWN during the summer. Saving money and growing our own food, yes please.
Easy to mow around – My husband loved this.
Look Great – Nice simple lines and when they were ready for harvest the looked full and amazing.
Kids didn’t run through and destroy the plants – this happened in the previous garden LOTS. Now we have a puppy to train to just go into the boxes.

Negative:

It is great for just about all our growing needs for a Garden. BUT, not running plants like zucchini or squash.
I missed growing certain plants that didn’t “fit” this style of gardening.

I’m excited for another year with my Raised Garden Beds. Hoping the deer stay away from my pole beans. I think our Dog might help keep them away this year. I don’t like planting them 3 times. Somehow I need to keep the animals away from my strawberries too.

I honestly feel like I’m still a beginner gardener and have lots to learn. I hope seeing that we built was helpful for your garden. If you have any questions on what I shared feel free to comment below.

Happy Gardening.

Garden/Backyard Planning

Garden_Backyard Planning Today I want to share with you about Garden/Backyard Planning. We bought our home in 2014. This is our journey snapshot of what we started with and where we are now.

If there is something you see that you want me to go deeper into explaining please comment below.

Here I’m going to show you how our gardening/backyard planning took shape. It would be great if we could have changed it all within that first year. BUT that costs A LOT of money.

To create a garden/backyard of your dreams it needs TIME.

When we bought this place we had one kid, now we have 3 and a puppy. Lots of changes. The most reno work we have done has been to the outside.

The previous owner had a GREAT garden already going. However things seemed to be in odd places and we had to re-work the yard how it fit for our dream for the property.

2014

Here’s the LARGE garden box and a side garden. This garden where the trees are was super overgrown and I’m still fighting an aggressive plant in that area.

Here’s the Greenhouse and the worn out old fence. I got to get a LOT of tomatoes out of that greenhouse. Sadly I still have lots of learning to do and how to grow plants in there. So far it’s been a starter house for me.

We redid the fence, it was awful.

Remember I mentioned Garden Planning taking time?

Summer 2019

The Wood was JUST getting weathered.

For our Daughters first birthday last year I tried doing a photo shoot. It shows the new fence and memorial garden that I added.

I really need to print and frame this one!

Here’s the current look at the Green House update we did. My husband broke one of the windows with the lawnmower and we didn’t want to keep replacing the glass so we worked hard to make it more user friendly and to save money.

PLUS everything we did here was re-purposed.

As you can see, we use it more for storage now. It’s tucked behind the house.

We still have more Garden/Backyard Planning to do. It takes time as I mentioned. The kids get right into it as well.

I know I didn’t share any tips on this post, but I hope seeing the before and after it gives you some inspiration to work on your own garden and backyard.

One last photo from last year. There’s a HUGE Reno, that is still happening. I’m hoping we get it DONE within the next 6 weeks and show you the reveal. It’s a huge change for us, We LOVE to entertain. This was when we served guests last year “in the garden”. That gives you a hint.

Have a great day and I would love to hear about your garden projects.

Finding my blogging ‘Niche’

Home and Garden Niche Ok Ok, one rookie mistake I’ve made and it hasn’t really been helping grow my blog is actually focus on a ‘niche’. I have no shame in sharing this, I thought my blog would be bigger by now.

For those not into the in’s and outs of blogging lingo there’s a thing you need to do and that is find your ‘niche’. Your area of expertise, or the thing that your passionate about. I honestly couldn’t find something that really suited what I wanted to share as my “expertise” for this little blog on the internet.

I guess going on a much needed break on our Mexican Vacation from my home did I not see this blog in a different light.

My blogging “Niche” was already coming through on it’s own: Home and Garden

I got some posts out that I do like to share my advice about, but they don’t relate to Home and Garden. They got barely any views.

Views do make a difference when you working to make an income from blogging. Since this blog is a fun creative outlet for me from my busy life being a stay at home mom views are great but I don’t go crazy about how many I get.

With a few tweaks of using the right hashtags and sharing more about our home and garden, my blog will grow. I’ve been WAITING to share more about our home, just life has gotten in the way to do that, like water leaks for example on an area I was ready to do the final photography on and well… I still have holes in my walls at the moment.

I look forward to giving this blog the direction it needs in expanding with the Home and Garden niche.

Notefull Living (2) I’m just someone who loves decorating our home. We live in the Fraser Valley, basically the Suburbs of Vancouver. I’m a big home body. Plus when the weather is good I’m outside. My husband and I already have a home we renovated and sold and the fun we had flipping that one. I’ll have that post up soon.

Speaking of Gardening, it didn’t take long for me to connect with other bloggers in this niche to find me. For those that have and read my blog, thanks for seeking me out.

The topics I was writing about on my blog was Faith, Family and Music. These are all things that are hugely important to me. I like sharing little bits of my Faith here and there on the blog.

In regards to Family, I sometimes share the odd picture without my kids faces showing for their privacy. I strongly believe in children’s privacy especially when it comes to the internet. Theresa Lynn Photography 023-21 Lastly, I’ve got my music. It’s tough to keep up with it with my family so young but I’m not giving up on it and already getting clients for my piano tuning, plus other things.

So If your a fellow Home and Garden enthusiast like I am, come along and SUBSCRIBE.

I honestly don’t feel like I’m a pro in any of these areas, just enjoy the journey of creating a lovely home for our family and an amazing time in the outdoors in my garden.

Carrie

Suburban Gardening

It’s Harvest Time!

I live in the Suburbs of Vancouver in the lovely Fraser Valley and I’m happy to say we scored a decent backyard with the property we bought. I’m still dreaming of an acreage, but for now I will soak up all I can from our little home in the burbs.

I’m a country girl deep down and I grew up with helping my grandparents harvest out of their big garden in the country and their suburban home that they downsized too. I grew up gardening with my mom and my grandpa ended up having a garden on our property too. It’s just in my veins I guess you can say.

To me, our backyard is small. This year we made planter boxes. Wow, I wish we made these sooner. We are actually planning to make more in another area. Dreaming big over here.

I’ve shared in my 10 Reasons why I love Gardenening that you can garden anywhere.

Here’s a look at our garden looked like in June.

Here’s a recent photo in the end of July. We have 4 boxes this year. The wooden Tee Pee’s are covered with snap peas and green beans.

This year I didn’t have as big of harvest as I have had in previous years. Still, anything in our freezer or in canning jars is a win win.

Our kids love running to the garden to pick a fresh snap pea and for me, I’m just simply in my happy place.

Our harvest this year was lots of Pole Beans, Snap Peas, Rhubarb, Strawberries, Maggie, White Onion, Lettuce, Arugula and Chives.

I think my favorite so far was making the blueberry rhubarb sauce with local blueberries. We made a cheesecake and brought that sauce along to a friends luncheon. Lets just say the dessert was DEVOURED. It was so good. I’ll have to remake it again and take pictures next time!!

I love summer. Especially our camping trips and time with family. But gardening to provide fresh food for my family, you can’t put a price on that.

_Growing your own vegetables never looses it's value_

It’s worth all the hard work that does into it. Once you have a system, it doesn’t take much to keep the maintenance going with it.

Do you have a garden? Like mine in town? If I could I would expand on the whole property…then we would really need an acreage.

What’s your favorite thing to grow?

10 Reasons Why I Love Gardening

10 REASONS I LOVE GARDENING

I’ve got a whole list of blog posts that I want to work on about our home. Mostly about spaces we are working on on the inside.

However, we are an outdoors family through and through.

Gardening for me at this time of year is my top thing to do outside.

I recently shared a snapshot of our backyard on Instagram and lots of people loved it. The lovely side of living in the Fraser Valley is the awesome spring weather we get (aside from lots of rain).

Truth is all I want to do is get outside and get the yard clean up done so the real work can begin in the gardens.

I went from starting out with one pot by my front door in a rental, when I was single. Getting a potting table built at our rental when we were married. To our little townhouse with the itty bitty front garden and backyard, with lots of pots added to my collection.

Quote - Gardening verses Working

Now to our property where I’m trying to live the suburban dream of having as much as a mini “homestead worthy” backyard as possible.

I know it’s possible, I have a book that’s got plans that could make this place work.

As much as I’ve been a stay at home mom for the past couple of years, it’s hard for me to focus working on my business and training when my garden is calling me to get outside.

One day I know my husband and I will have both enough space for the kids to spread out, He can have his lawn and I’ll be living as much as a homesteading dream as I can.

Here’s my 10 reasons why I love Gardening.

1: Saves money: If you can get enough produce and flower bouquets out of your garden that you spend at the local grocery store then it’s paying off. I can say we are getting close to that.

This topic could easily be a blog post all in it’s own from what we have experienced on saving money.

2: Stress Relief: If you haven’t spent time outside in a garden just simply weeding, then I hope reading this will help you be motivated to think about making a garden. Even if it’s pots of a deck outside a condo.

3: Learning a whole new skill: As much as people say to others that they have a “green thumb”, I’ve noticed gardening is a skill to be practiced and perfected. Even the large growing greenhouse companies have whole growing trails fail.

4: Peace and Quiet: Those early morning or late night watering is something that’s become a favorite quiet time I look forward to every spring.

5: Creating a memorial garden: In 2014, we lost someone very special to our family. Most people who have lost a loved one have a physical graveside they can go to and visit.

With having a miscarriage we don’t. Our little girl passed away at 17 weeks in my second pregnancy. In her memory I have created “Gloria’s Garden”. I love sitting in the Adirondack chairs by the ruffed up old tricycle (pictured above) in our backyard.

6: Local Produce: Nothing gets more local than growing your own food and discovering how fresh and amazing your meals taste with each gardening season.

7: Teaching my kids: I love teaching them about where food comes from, it’s not just from the grocery store. I also love teaching my kids the joy and gift that gardening is. My oldest without being prompted or asked jumped right in to help create his little sister’s garden.

I learned the value of hard work from growing up in the country. With our little suburban property, our kids are still learning these wonderful life values I was taught.

8: Life lessons: The parallels of life lessons and gardening keep surprising me every year. If your a regular gardener like I am. I’m not an expert by any means. However, I keep finding that what I learn from gardening can be applied to life.

For example: knowing bad things (like weeds) can be deceiving and pretty BUT, if not dealt with can over take your life (or your garden). The morning glory in my garden is almost more than I can handle, just like bad things that come up in my life. If I don’t deal with it, it’s everywhere. You can overcome it…eventually.

9: Happiness: Gardening brings out lots of happiness for me. Watching my kids sneak “treats” from the strawberry plants. Running out during dinner prep and adding herbs or making muffins with the rhubarb is worth all the time that goes into gardening.

Recently we upgraded our garden area with raised beds!

We are even starting to build up enough of a harvest in a our little backyard to fill up our freezer to enjoy in the winter months. It just keeps giving.

10: Time with God: This one not everyone will agree with me on. That’s fine, where I am at in my life this time is becoming more and more a necessity with my walk with God. That peace and quiet time I spoke about in number 4 is fast becoming a much needed prayer time.

Which tip is your favorite? Love to hear why you love gardening? If you don’t have a garden I hope some of this is inspiring to help get you started.