Exercising my green thumb, and building up some calluses

This weekend was pretty rainy and very windy, which actually would make for some good shed hunting weather, but since I am doing that next weekend, I figured I would finally get started on my garden this weekend.

This year, I have been fortunate enough to be able to rent one of the community garden plots here in town.  I was on the waiting list for a long time and I ended up getting one of the last spots for this year.  Here is a link to the website for the community gardens, in case you are interested: https://sites.google.com/site/koppelfarm/

It had looked like the plot I am renting hadn't been used in a very long time, and it was in quite a bit of disrepair, but now it is looking good.  There was a bunch of trash and junk in the plot and it was completely overgrown with grass.  I forgot to get a before picture, but I did think of taking a picture mid-way through tilling it.  Then I took a picture today after raking out most of the grass and putting a nice border/drainage around it.  In the first picture, it is a little hard to see where the plot actually is, but if you use the stake in the foreground of both pictures, you can get an idea of what I was working with.

After tilling my plot at the community gardens, I took the rototiller back to my house to work on a small section in my back yard.  My roommate and I actually convinced our landlord to put a garden in, with the stipulation that we would water the lawn over the summer.  It actually turned out to be a pretty good sized garden, considering how small the back yard actually is, with our garden butting right up next to the wheat field.  Over the course of the day yesterday, we made a few trips to Ace, where they have some deals going on right now so we were able to get a decent amount of free stuff.  We also ended up getting a bunch of strawberry plants to put in the little spot of dirt next to our front porch, which we planted yesterday as well.  I am pretty excited to be able to grab some strawberries on my way into the house this summer!  Below are a  couple snapshots of our back yard garden.  In the first picture you can just barely see Moscow Mountain in the background.  In the second, you can really get a good idea of all the wheat fields I have right behind my house that I told you about previously.  For a good part of the day today, I actually had a good time just watching the wind form waves in the wheat.

I capped off a great day gardening yesterday with watching Michigan beat Syracuse in the basketball semifinals, and I am sure you all know but now they are on their way to the championship game tomorrow night against Louisville.  I am very excited for the game!  GO BLUE!