My First Garden

After set up our new furniture and stocking the kitchen we decided to make use of our (fairly small) balcony and start a miniature garden. This started as a trip to get just the most basic cooking herbs: basil, thyme, rosemary and oregano. From there we decided to look for a couple of house plants and maybe some flowers. It's possible we got a little carried away, but we ended up with 8 herbs: basil, lemon basil, oregano, French thyme, sage, parsley, cilantro, and rosemary. Although some may be unnecessary, we're both excited to incorporate these fresh homegrown herbs into our cooking. Here are the many herbs we picked out: (to be transplanted to various pots this weekend)

I picked out one flower to sit on our outside table (visible in the picture) but I'm not really sure of it's name. I love the deep purple and delicate flower but admit to being concerned that I have no idea how big this will get or how needy it'll become. At this point it looks nice on the table, which is all I'm asking for.



Lastly, we picked out 2 things for inside the apartment. Both are very small and will hopefully grow fairly well over the next year that we're here. We'd like to have a few bigger house plants but right now they don't fit into our budget... so we're counting on these growing into the plants we had in mind.

The weather has been low to mid 80s all week and we're getting a lot of afternoon sun on the balcony. As long as we keep them watered I think we'll be set. Maybe we should have started with 1 and waited to see if we could keep it alive before buying a dozen plants but so far they're looking pretty good. Any advice?

The First Party on the Deck

Last night we had the first party on the deck, with the barbeque, the umbrella all lit up, candles in hurricane glass, the fire pit in the patio area below, 28 people altogether. Way too much food. Kids roasted marshmallows and made smores.

I'm 50 and it's the first time I've really done this. How did that happen.

Anyway, it's devastation out there this morning. :)

The only real problem is I need serving/side table for occasions like that, a folding table with a white tablecloth, because the food took up all the room on the table, even with a couple of smaller tables holding the chips and dip, the baker's rack holding the watermelon and incidentals and the serving cart holding the drinks, plates and cups etc.

All in all, a good day the whole family together including my sister and her family and my parents, all of our kids, with two of them leaving for LA today.