With the advent of spring, our family has been spending a lot of time outside in the yard. This is our third spring in this home, so it’s very satisfying to see all of our efforts from the previous years paying off. Trees, bushes, and bulbs are blooming in the right places, and our lawn […]
Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category
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10 Tips from 2 Amateur Gardeners
March 12th, 2014 
Jessica Brad and I both come from gardening families. Both of our mothers grow flowers, and both of our fathers have a vegetable garden. Our grandfathers also had vegetable gardens, and we grew up seeing our relatives tending their little backyard plots. Yet when Brad and I moved to Northern California, we knew very little about […]
A Pumpkin Story
November 15th, 2013 Jessica Once upon a time a young wife bought two pumpkins, one for a Halloween costume, and the other to cook. A Frightfully Frugal Halloween How to Cook a Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin One year later, her parents decided to buy her three very large pumpkins from the Pumpkin Patch. Most of those pumpkins ended up on the […]
All Things Pumpkin
October 31st, 2013 Jessica Yesterday our family took our annual trip to the Pumpkin Farm (which has free admission!) where we enjoyed a petting zoo, hay bales, trampolines, slides, climbing, tractors, trains, and of course…pumpkins. As you can tell, the kids had a great time. Naomi had SUCH a great time that she cried when it was time to […]
Our Compost Garden Harvest
September 7th, 2013 Jessica This week Brad harvested our compost garden! Counting the one pumpkin we harvested in July, we had nine pumpkins this year! We also had lots of other vegetables show up, like acorn squash and spaghetti squash. (We’ve already eaten all the carrots and tomatoes, and frozen our peaches.) Our roses and sunflowers have been thriving […]
Free Fruit!
August 23rd, 2013 Jessica We have a peach tree in our backyard, which produced a bumper crop of fresh peaches this year! About 75% of the peaches we harvested are pictured below. Brad also went to a local camp last week, where he was permitted to pick a tree covered in wild plums. About 25% of the plums he […]
Our Carrot Crop
August 13th, 2013 Jessica On Sunday my husband decided that it was time to harvest our carrots. If you remember, he’d been growing them in a plastic tub next to our compost garden. He filled the tub with compost soil, dug a couple of trenches, and filled them with carrot seeds. Since it was our first time planting carrots, […]
Our Compost Garden Runneth Over
July 29th, 2013 Jessica After a week of writing love letters to my dashing husband, I’m back to writing about frugal living. So how’s about a quick look at our very frugal “compost garden”? Above you can see the volunteer pumpkins that are taking over our backyard. We’ve already harvested one pumpkin, processed the insides, and eaten the seeds! […]
Free Flowers
July 8th, 2013 Jessica Who needs to buy flowers when you can grow your own for free? We have plenty of rose bushes, geraniums, sunflowers, and wild flowers growing around our yard. I love when Brad picks me a half-dozen roses for the dining room table, or when the kids come running inside with a handful of wild flowers […]
Freebie Friday!
June 28th, 2013 Jessica We have all kinds of “free” things growing around our house these days! Our compost pile has exploded into a gigantic pumpkin patch that gets bigger every day. Our grape arbor (which only produced two bunches of grapes last year) is covered in grapes. We’re already harvesting bright red tomatoes from our two tomato plants. […]
