Planting Our Lemon Tree

Weekend Project #2: Our New Lemon Tree

Nate and I love the idea of having fresh fruit at the tip of our fingers.  My parents have an apple tree in their backyard and we have helped take some apples off of their hands when we lived up North.  Now, we are not so fortunate.  When we go to Home Depot or Lowe's or any store with a garden center, we always walk by the fruit trees and dream.

We finally decided to buy a lemon tree!  Yeah!  I'm super excited to have one.  We bought one of the patio citrus fruit trees.  It came in its own little planter, but we decided to transplant it into a larger one before the tree got too big.  We have to have it in a planter since we are renting our duplex.

We bought a large planter and Nate drilled 3 holes into the bottom for drainage.

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I got Jman outside to help me pour the dirt into the planter.  We had fun getting a little dirty!

 We bought a plant with 3 lemons growing on it already.  I teased the roots before planting it and made sure it was well watered.  Planting this makes me miss having my own garden.  I love gardening and landscaping.

Now the fun part is keeping the bugs and animals away from it, and waiting for the lemons to ripen!  

Blessings,

Amanda

Restarting Our Christmas Cactus

This week, I'm going to be posting about the projects we got busy on this weekend!  We finished almost ALL of them!

Weekend Project #1: Saving Our Christmas Cactus

We have a christmas cactus that is well over 100 years old.  We got it from Nate's grandma in Montana.  She has a green thumb, and that is an under statement.  The cactus has been kept alive from cuttings and restarting it.

Our cactus was doing really well in Minnesota.  It was blooming and looking great.  Since the trek down south, it hasn't been looking so hot.  First of all, we didn't have room for it in the house, so I had to keep it outside.  The shock of moving from 70 degrees to 90-100 degrees really affected the plant.  Secondly, we have been getting a lot of rain lately and I have forgotten to pull it under the overhang.  That could have been avoided, if I would have been a little more responsible.  Lastly, there are a lot more insects outside than inside.  Enough said.  :)

Here is what the cactus looks like now:

I'm lucky I got any cuttings off of this at all!  It was completely brown at the stem and the cactus leaves were just falling off.  I was able to get a few cuttings with some branches on them to hopefully get some roots growing.

When I take cuttings, I look for bright green leaves with a "Y" in them.  You can see one clearly in the picture below.  I always take more cuttings than I'll need, to ensure I get at least one or two cuttings with root growth.  I placed my cuttings in a small glass filled with just a little bit of water.  The glass is sitting on my kitchen counter, next to the window so it can get sunlight.  It should take a few days for the roots to start.  I'm hoping to have a positive update for you next week!

Blessings,

How I Pass The Time...

Since we have no new baby yet, we are staying busy with other tasks!  We landscaped the front of the house last summer.  I've been adding plants, bushes and flowers ever since.  I love doing it, so it's lots of fun for me!  The only part I dislike is having to weed it every week.  I finally decided that I wouldn't do it anymore and talked Nate into "looking" at wood chips to put down in the beds.  The trip turned into buying 5 bags, laying them down and then returning for 15 more bags!  We finished the front, laid wood chips in the back flowerbed and still have 6 and a half bags left to put down around our raspberry and blackberry bushes.  Work, work, work!    

BG helping check out the depth of chips.

The left side of the bed completed.

The right side of the bed before wood chips.

The right side completed.

Backyard Work and Fun

This past weekend and week we did a bunch of work in the yard.  We decided to plant grass where we had our gardens last year and have a much smaller garden this summer.  We did add some landscaping though.  We paved out a semi-circle and I planted some different perennials back there.  It turned out great and we're hoping our grass grows!

Our landscaping - There are blanket flowers, creeping phlox, lupine, hot pokers and "gold in a basket" (I'm pretty sure that's the last kind) planted back here.

BG in the mud

Jman petting his swing, Charlie Horse.  He came up with a great name!!

The bucket filled with muddy water.  You'll notice the rock in BG's hands...yes, the boys were throwing them in and laughing hysterically when they got splashed.

The only problem with planting grass is that the boys now have no place to dig...which causes problems!  My boys LOVE to play in the mud.  Monday and Tuesday of this past week were warm and beautiful here.  (And we didn't plant grass until Thursday night.)  The boys had lots of fun making mud pies and splashing rocks in a bucket filled with muddy water.  I think they went through 3 outfits in 1 hour before I finally had the bright idea to put them in their swimming trunks!  Needless to say, they had 2 baths and a ton of fun!