Finally, New Garden Pictures! + Taking a Break for a Few Days to Work on Kitchen

Overcast skies + cooler daytime temps = good opportunity to take backyard photos!!

First up, thanks to my hubby working his rump off several different times in recent months, we now have grass growing in nearly all the areas in the backyard that are supposed to have grass. Woohoo!! It is so nice to walk outside and see grass rather than dirt (I am a grass + trees girl, not a sand + cactus girl). Next summer we’ll get some grass planted right under the swingset, then we should be set. Below are the “After” and “Before” photos. (There’s just dirt underneath the blue tarp in the “before” pic — we used to have an above-ground pool set up there.)

These are the newer yellow squash plants; at the far end of this bed are potatoes. There’s still a few herbs growing in here too. (This was the bed that started out with lettuces, corn, and carrots.)

The okra plants are doing pretty good too.

Lookee, it’s The Tomato Jungle!!! There actually are some pinto bean plants growing on the outer edge, but otherwise this bed has been overtaken by tomato plants. There are oodles of ‘maters out there right now.

My favorite tomatoes we’re growing are these little Yellow Pear Tomatoes.

Lastly, here is the very last sunflower plant out of the three packets’ worth of seeds I planted in the spring. Once these die, we’ll pull up the plants and let the grass fill in the area where we had the sunflowers.

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I’m excited to say that I will be sanding, primering, and painting kitchen cabinets over the next several days. I’m not being sarcastic, I really *am* excited!!

We’ve done a lot to this house since we moved in seven years ago (something I have to remind myself of every now and then), and it feels good to be to a point where we can focus on the kitchen. We’ve already done lots of removal in there — nasty carpet, excessive cabinetry for the size of the space, etc. — everything else that’s left to be done is cosmetic . . . the “prettying up” work!! I’ll admit that demolition is fun, but I am itching to get the prettying up underway :).

Being the night owl I am, I’ll start sanding the cabinets tonight, and may even get around to removing the cabinet doors and starting to primer them. I’ll be interested to see how far along I get by the end of the weekend. Wouldn’t it be cool if I was finished with the cabinets by then?!?!

My plan is to take a break from my blog and be scarce on the computer, so that I can focus on the kitchen. And when I’m not focusing on the kitchen, I have a new craft project I started last night that I can putz around with. But you never know, I may decide to pop on and post some in-progress pictures ;-).

I do have some blog comments to respond to, which I’ll do after my few days’ blogging break. I received a cute package of some fat quarters from bookwormbethie, which I will post pics of when I get back (thanks, Beth!!).

If I don’t pop in before Saturday, all of you folks in the States have a safe July 4th!!