Behold, the fruits of our labor; harvested today, fresh from our very own garden – limes, herbs (basil, mint, & parsley), nasturtium, red onions, tomatoes, & peppers!

Ah, how far we’ve come… This is how our little garden began & this is how it looks today! We’ve really enjoyed growing our own herbs, fruits, & vegetables & Ryan has been great about keeping up the watering (which needs to be done almost daily to keep the tomatoes from getting blossom end rot or the other plants from wilting) & training the tomatoes & peppers with bamboo sticks & rubber-coated wire ties to help them support the vegetables that are growing from their vines. Our garden has, as I like to say, put on its “big girl pants” & is all grown up; we’re getting the beginning of tomatillos & baby eggplant, we just recently harvested some peppers & onion, & we’ve been enjoying our lettuce, basil & other herbs, & raspberries & strawberries (although our strawberry yield has been slim to none, the ones we’ve picked & eaten have been delicious!) for some time now.

Our lime tree, a.k.a. “Captain Sunshine”, has produced several limes & I have to say that when we picked & used a lime recently it was honestly the very best lime I’ve ever tasted; one might argue that it tasted so good because it was from our very own lime tree, but I think it was just that good!

We haven’t had any ripe tomatoes yet, but I’m crossing my fingers & hoping that some of the tomatoes will develop fully (milk, it does a tomato good – who knew?) & we’ll be able to enjoy them eventually.

We’ve enjoyed learning new things about growing as well as expanding/changing our garden each summer & hope that each year we plan & plant our garden it will be bigger & better than ever before. Luckily, we have friends that are excellent & experienced gardeners to guide us along the way; thanks Abigail & Steven & Mark & Amy!

We had a lovely weekend & were super excited to use our brand new, fancy pants, Canon 5D MarkII camera! We enjoyed a lovely dinner out with friends on Friday at Melange (&, bonus, it was Restaurant Week in Ann Arbor), took a trip out to Eastern Market in Detroit on Saturday & then watched the World Cup U.S. vs. Ghana game & ended the day with a nice cookout with friends.

Here are several more photos we took over the weekend with our fancy new camera – it’s so awesome!

We planted our garden at the end of May & I’m happy to report that it’s doing really great so far; we were away the first week in June & when we returned it had grown quite a lot in such a short period of time – I’m sure all the rain we had that week didn’t hurt either!

We were excited to pick & eat our first strawberry, from one of our two strawberry pots we have planted, this last weekend. We also had the pleasure of picking & eating some of the lettuce, arugula, nasturtium, parsley, orange mint, & basil we planted as well this past week. I can’t wait until we are able to harvest our tomatoes, peppers (bell pepper, poblano, & jalapeno), limes, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, red onions, raspberries, etc. Here are some more photos I took of our garden this last weekend…

Ryan built this awesome planter box a couple weekends ago from cedar, it’s on wheels/casters, & has rope pulls which make it movable – it’s pretty great! So, now that it’s warming up & safe to plant, we had the pleasure of picking out what we’d like in our first ever real vegetable garden. We picked up lots of goodies to fill it with (as well as to plant in other pots on our patio) & are so excited to see some things grow & to be able to enjoy our own fruits, vegetables, & herbs for meals throughout the summer!

Here’s what we got: Lilies (we’ve had these for several years & they come back every spring/summer), Pansies, Snapdragons, Marigolds, Nasturtium (Alaska), Superbells (Apricot Punch), Strawberries (Everbearing – Alpine & Ozark Beauty), Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Mint, Orange Mint, Basil, Thai Basil, Italian Plain Parsley, Early Red Pepper, Cal Wonder Green Bell Pepper, Arugula, Magenta Red Crisp Lettuce, Tomatoes (Roma Paste, Genovese, Marvel Stripe, Brandywine, & Better Boy), Eggplant, Brussels Sprouts, & Jalapeno Pepper. We’re hoping to pick up some Ancho Pepper plants at the Farmer’s Market this Saturday to add to our box, some more basil later on when it warms up a bit more, & we’ll be set.

And here are some photos of our little beauties sitting happily in their pots & boxes…grow, baby, grow; the really fun part will be seeing our photos later in the summer when our plants grow up & fill this box in!

Thanks to our wonderful friends Mark & Amy for the tomato plants & to Abigail & Steven for our tomato, eggplant, & jalapeno pepper plants; we hope to have enough to share with you all later this summer!

We had a VERY busy, but very rewarding & productive weekend; we finally revamped our guest room/office & are so happy with the outcome! After many hours of work & trips to IKEA (three shelving units, a bike rack, a desk, a wall shelf, & other miscellaneous items), the hardware store, etc., we have a whole new space to enjoy & our guests will finally have a “real” bed (futon) to sleep on instead of the blow up mattress we store in our closet. Ryan & I had to give the futon a test run, so we took a nice nap on it on Sunday afternoon after all our hard work was complete; I slept well & so did he, so I think it’ll fit the bill!

Here’s a cute little lamp we picked up at IKEA for our new office desk & an adorable little potted plant I picked up from my favorite flower shop, Pot & Box…

And once that project was done, we spent Sunday afternoon cleaning out Ryan & Jen’s studio space at EMU & it is really coming together & looks nice; I’m excited for both of them to have a nice space to work in. We started our day with breakfast at The Bomber in Ypsi, to keep us fueled & ready for the work ahead; here’s a photo from breakfast, which we all enjoyed (Ryan really enjoyed his peanut butter, chocolate chip pancakes)…

And this weekend’s project will be to plant some vegetables in our planter box on the patio; I can’t wait to have my own garden producing herbs, vegetables, fruit, & flowers for me to enjoy all summer long!

Our patio doesn’t look like this quite yet, but it will soon! And with the weather being so gorgeous in Ann Arbor today (high of 80 – in April – & that’s impressive here!), I am struggling to sit in my office when I can hear the birds chirping outside & feel the cool breeze & see the sunny day just out my window. Sure would be nice to be sitting on my patio right now, wearing a billowy skirt, sipping on a glass of white wine with fresh berries & mint in it, & just enjoying this beautiful day – guess it’ll have to wait until after 5pm…

Ryan & I picked up an old, wooden RC Cola crate when we were in El Paso, TX last December & I thought it would make a great planter. So, we went herb shopping at the farmer’s market today & put it together & I think it has to be just about the cutest herb planter ever! We planted rosemary, thyme, basil, thai basil, oregano, & mint.

I like making my apartment/home a nice place to come home to & finding little treasures here & there to make it feel homey. Here are some things that I’ve picked up & that I love having around our house…

Our friend Abigail has a lovely home & had these lovely, white, porcelain vases that I had to get for myself – here they are (well one of them, at least)…

And I picked up a set of four of these lovely silver lamp shades from Apple Annie’s in Ypsi…

And there’s always some lovely potted plants & flowers around to brighten up our home too, which I enjoy…

And, someday when Ryan & I have a house of our own, I like to think about what we might do with our home – like have an awesome bathroom, like this one (LOVE that clawfoot tub!)…

Happy Valentine’s Day! For your Valentine’s listening enjoyment, check out Weekend Lovers Soul Mix by Erik Simmons (one of Ryan’s students at EMU).

I love love & I love to celebrate it; so bring on the chocolate, bring on the flowers (roses from Pot & Box), & bring on the Valentine’s pj’s (check out my sweet Valentine’s pj’s in the photo above)!

Ryan & I went out to dinner last night at Terry B’s in Dexter, MI to celebrate & had a delicious dinner. But, for tonight, we got all the ingredients for a great Valentine’s Day dinner at home (after his basketball game, of course).

We found a **recipe for Pasta with Goat Cheese, Lemon, & Asparagus on Epicurious & we stopped by Sparrow Market & Zingerman’s Deli (where we picked up this AMAZING peppercorn goat cheese) for all the ingredients for our feast & paid a visit to Everyday Wines for a great bottle of wine to pair with our meal. And, for dessert, we picked up chocolate covered strawberries from Schakolad & we’ll pair that with another great bottle of wine (I had this wine with a strawberry dessert once & it tasted just like fresh, sweet strawberries, yum!) that I picked up from Everyday Wines.

** We tweaked the recipe a bit here and there. Grill the asparagus coating it with kosher salt, coarse ground black pepper, and some dried lemon peel. Use more lemon zest than the recipe calls for and just toss the ingredients together when serving no need to pre-mix everything unless its for presentation purposes. Sprinkle a little bit of lemon juice on top when served. We also served the dish up with rosemary and garlic bread. For that we just took some minced garlic, chopped rosemary, and combined it with some Earth Balance and spread it on some thick slices of Zingerman’s Rustic Italian bread then baked in the oven at 375 until lightly brown. Next time we make the pasta we are going to add some sauteed onions (with butter and balsamic) into the dish.