I starting my hand at gardening the first year Matt and I were married. I was so happy to have my own little house. A place where I could create a home, love on people and try my hand at 'domestic' things'. My first attempt at gardening wasn't too successful! But, once I realized that I was over-complicating it, things seemed to grow! You put a seed in the dirt, water it and watch it grow. AMAZING.

For the past 10 years, I have been gardening out of raised beds. I am learning how I need to approach things a bit differently when gardening on a large, flat plot of dirt.

The weeds are killing me! Definitely using ALOT more mulch next year. But what a sense of accomplishment to enjoy the fruits of our labor!

Most Saturday mornings, Addilyn helps me in the garden while Savanna naps. What a joy to listen to her chat, build mud pies, look for worms, pick fruits and veggies and just get dirty in the garden. It takes 10 times longer to pull weeds and work when she is with me, but it is a special time for us.

I thought I would share a few of our favorite summer recipes, so far this summer. I am trying to be creative with food we typically don't eat, but are growing in the garden {kale, cabbage, leeks, etc}. We do a lot of grilling in the summer, and a lot of 'winging it' when it comes to summer meal planning. I love having a few favorite recipes and then tweaking them a bit according to what I have on hand.