Our organic garden and our plot for Spring (Pun Intended)

With all the craziness in the media and organic food disappearing from the grocery stores, our family focused on what food we will grow ourselves in our backyard garden.

We already have strawberry plants growing

a young avocado tree we grew from a pit

a maturing peach tree we watched blossom and now eagerly anticipating the dozens of ripening peaches.

We are most proud of our hummingbird haven, a garden dedicated to plants that attract pollinators.

It has a gigantic aloe vera plant, which the bees and hummingbirds love to visit since several of the stalks are blooming deep orange flowers.

The symmetry is captivating.

Our hummingbird haven hosts a salvia greggi

A roaringly growing honeysuckle with the most radiant orangey-red flowers

A Russian Sage with delicate purple flowers

Our newest additions to the hummingbird haven are a Mexican firecracker and a penstemon.

Our backyard receives visits from all kinds of creatures, including at least one hummingbird visitor several times a day.

The hummingbird haven is quite a happening spot.  We even had a duel between hummingbirds!

Making the Garden Even More Colorful

Inspired by the artistic rocks painted by our aunt and hidden throughout our yard (ala an egg hunt)

We painted our own rocks.

We have been adding splashes of color to our rocks and placing them in our garden.

Our Spring Garden

To prepare our spring garden beds, we removed the invasive weeds and grass that seems to kill everything we plant in the ground.

We laid down landscape fabric in preparation for the river rock with which we are covering our yard.

We filled the bottom of the garden bed with used bathroom tissue rolls.

Then we filled the bed with organic soil from Happy Frog and organic mulch.

We chose seeds for the appropriate growing season.

Then we plant them in egg carton planters we prepared ourselves.

Once the plant grows bigger and doesn't need as much nurturance, we will transplant into custom-built garden bed or an above ground pot.

It is a labor of love and well worth it.  Our family unites around growing our own food.

Plans for the chicken coop are currently underway and we just bought eight baby chicks!

Baby chicks

We are so excited to welcome our eight new arrivals to the family.

They are beyond adorable.

We rescued them from Ace Hardware on 22nd Ave. where they were crammed in with the other chicks.  We are not advocates of factory farmed animals, such as the baby chicks which are sold to feed stores but chickens are something we've wanted to add to our backyard garden and the time was right.  We would rather nurture our own chickens to gather and eat their eggs than continue to buy and eat eggs from the store.

Upon bringing them home, Papa Bare set up a cardboard box with newspaper, filled an old Dr. Bronners Magic Soap bottle with water and affixed to the side of the box, ground up finer their chicken starter feed for easier digestion and gave them a sponge bath with warm filtered water and a washcloth.  We dried them in a towel immediately and put them in their new box home.

Today, we made an anti-mite solution with aloe vera grown in our backyard, essential oils of tea tree and peppermint.  We gave them another sponge bath and used the solution.  We dried them off with a towel but not quick enough as they made quite a ruckus.

Since cleaning them off and treating them with the homemade solution, we are snuggling each chick in our hands and marveling at how adorable they are and what sweet chirps they make.

Have we mentioned how much they poop?  We are changing the paper in the bottom of their box about every two hours.  Impressive.