Garden update.

Hello Friends!

As we have previously blogged about, team Oakley has fallen in love with Gardening out here in TN! We have planted, failed, planted again, and enjoyed the whole process. 

Our favorite "crop" has been our basil. We planted more basil than anything else, and we are enjoying it. We have it fresh, dried, and we found out that we can freeze it as well. We love it in pasta, soup, sauces, and Michael even put it in an awesome tomato and feta egg dish that got some good reviews :)

 Beka has especially enjoyed the cherry tomatoes. We have three plants, and they are all doing great. Unfortunately, none of the tomatoes have made it to the kitchen, as Beka ends up eating them while watering the plants :)

We know that it was late in the planting season, but we were curious on planting seeds, and what containers they work best in, so we are conducting an experiment on our upstairs deck to see which seedlings sprout best in which of our recycled containers. 

We will let you all know our findings! In these containers we have beans, beefsteak tomatoes, bell peppers, and sunflowers.

This is a view of our container garden and Compost from the upstairs deck. We are renting our place, and out landlord insists on no planting in the ground, so we are enjoying finding old containers and "up cycling" them into something full of life. We call it our trash garden :)

 And here is Michael's pride and joy. This is our compost pile. It lets us recycle our old paper towels, tea and coffee grinds, produce, paper, cardboard, and so much more. We use it as a fertilizer for our plants and add some into their soil. It has been really fun, and saves us some money at the same time. It's crazy to put trash in, and get good soil out months later. 

 And this is one of our favorite features on our home. The tree lined back yard is HUGE and offers privacy, and a great place to have friends over to play ultimate Frisbee. 

 And this is not in our garden, but next door our neighbor has goats and peacocks. They have become our good friends :)

 We affectionately call this one Whitey. He eats anything and everything we attempt to feed him. He also comes to the fence when we are outside and bleats until we walk over and pet him. 

 And this is Brownie. He was a little more apprehensive to us at first, but he has warmed up now. 

 This is one of two peacocks that live next door. They are very loud, but we love them anyways. They also love to jump the fence and play in our yard. 

 So thank you for reading our garden update! We will leave you with some photos of us hanging out with our friend Whitey.

Thanks for sharing our adventure with us! 

Until next time,

Team Oakley