Backyard fun

What, you say? Two blog posts in one day? The world has gone mad.

I just couldn't help myself! I wanted to share some pictures of the fun we had this afternoon working on our yard. We figure we've lived here over a year...it's about time we give as much lovin' to the outside of our house as we have to the inside. Plus, our little apple trees are getting lonely.

So first up, we transplanted some young maples from the woods around Ryan's parents' house to our yard. We then put together our new composter and deposited the inaugural batch of kitchen scraps (plus some leaves). Very exciting! If you are local, the Chittenden Solid Waste District offers a cool incentive to compost...a reduced price compost bin. For the mere price of $48.50, you can have your very own SoilSaver bin! They retail for $74.45 on Amazon so it's a decent savings. CSWD also offers free plans so you can build your own composting bin.

I love that our local solid waste district encourages composting. According to the CSWD website, food scraps make up one-third of people's trash so it really can help reduce waste. (Stepping off soap box now...)

Here are some pics. of our backyard adventures today. Milo was a real help...or something like that. He made the day at lot more humorous than it would have been otherwise. My favorite Milo moment? Him trying to crawl into the hole Ryan just dug for one of the maples. Too funny. He had a blast. The sign of a good day for Milo? Two baths. One to get all the mud and dirt off of him and the second because we had to drain the first tub because the water was brown. Today was definitely a two-bath kind of day.

Steve's apple orchard!

So another big accomplishment to note was the planting of our very own apple orchard! Ryan has always had a thing for apple trees and we love the idea of edible landscaping. We got a great deal on three different varieties of apple trees, Macintosh, Liberty, and Sweet Sixteen, from Gardeners' Supply in Burlington (a fantastic gardening supply store, by the way) and put them in the ground last weekend. The feat would not have been possible without the help of my sister, Sara, and father-in-law, Steve. He is a gardener extraordinaire and in honor of the hard work he put into the project, we have officially dubbed it Steve's Apple Orchard. The folks at Gardeners' said to expect fruit in about three years. I love thinking about picking apples from our own backyard and making lots of apple pies in our new kitchen...with our little guy :)