Our little backyard oasis

Due to the unusually AWESOME weather we have experienced lately, this will be the first year that we have the backyard up and running before the long weekend. Chris and I were so ahead of the game we had to wait for the garden centres to get their herbs in.

This will be my fifth year living in this apartment and Chris’ fourth, and every year we have tried growing stuff in the backyard — some successful, others not. By now we know what will and won’t work and just have to work with what we got, which is basically shade tolerant plants and herbs. The bane of Chris’ existence are two Manitoba Maple trees (his least favourite tree) which provide us with lots of privacy and shade in the back, but limits sun exposure.

A nice surprise this year though was our chives came back from last year, so we got that going for us. Even though the backyard is quite small and is hard to successfully grow stuff, I love the space we have. It’s perfect for us right now and is a nice retreat to hang out with friends, BBQ, play darts and read.

This year we planted rosemary, mint, cilantro, dill, basil and parsley. We planted two mint plants due to our Mojito consumption, hopefully it’s enough!

herbizzles before_herb_garden chris_transplanting annual_chives dartboard manitoba_maple buddha oskie_boy cilantro mint finished_herb_garden backyard_oasis

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Easter goodies

This past weekend Chris, Oscar Dog and I travelled home to visit our families who all live in and around the Toronto area. It was a weekend filled with Euchre games (which gets pretty intense on my side), delicious meals, lots of beer and wine and, of course, chocolate.

Every time we go back home for a visit, we always come back with more than we left with. This weekend was no exception. I’m pretty stoked with the goodies we got — a spring cactus and some Pisanki (Polish easter eggs) from the original Mr. and Mrs. Czed, an old cuckoo clock that belonged to my Godmother’s Mother, an old dresser that belonged to my Grandpa and some paintings that my Grandma painted way back in the day.

Below are some *pics of the goods, the dresser is going to be our first DIY post so stay tuned to see a picture of that. Cheers!

Easter Spring Cactus Easter Pisanki Easter Landscape Painting Easter Cuckoo Clock

*Chris and I are both getting back into photography so hopefully our skills get better as the posts keep coming.

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