I love this time of the year because I can get outside and get DIRTY! I love gardening… To be clear, I’m not always the best about taking care of my plants after I plant them, but I love planting them. I also love upcycling, so my yard is my next frontier this year, I think. I saw the boots on Pinterest, I think (from which I steal all my best ideas). I’ve been searching thrift stores for the perfect rubber boot and I finally found some kids boots that were adorable! I planted two kinds of mint, and apple mint and a spearmint. I love having mint in my garden but it definitely needs to be in containers. We’ll see how long these last, but for now they look adorable.

This is my little rag-tag suburban garden so far. We have the baker’s rack that I took from the curb after my neighbor put it out. A little purple and blue spray-paint brightened it up and (hopefully) made it a little more rust-resistant.

The previous homeowners left a bunch of almost empty cans of paint, so I dried them out and spray-painted them green and blue. I put some holes in the bottoms with my awl and… voila: “pots” for herbs!

Finally, I upcycled two laundry baskets that had broken handles. Some green spray-paint on the big white one (don’t try using regular spray paint on plastic, it just scratches off) kind of darkened it up and made it look a little less “laundry-baskety”. I took a bunch of pieces of wood from our fire-pit pile and used yarn to tie them around the perimeter of the basket. I was trying to cut wood down to similar heights but broke my saw blade half way through. Oh well.

I lined both baskets with newspaper to keep all the dirt in before filling them. I call them my “salad gardens”. The plant markers were from our wedding- we used them as table markers and, of course, I needed to find something to do with them. I especially like that these baskets are kind of like “raised beds“. We have 3 dogs and no one wants dog pee on their lettuce.

I know this one’s been done a LOT, but I couldn’t resist. It’s my boy watering the watering can planter. It has purple pansies in it… I hope they bloom.

This, however, is my piece-de-resistance. I was going to donate my boy’s old castle but as I was about to put it in the car I noticed that it was full of perfect spaces for plants. The back was all open, so I cut out a piece of plywood, spray-sealed it, and then caulked it on the back. I filled the sucker with dirt and then stuffed plants in all the holes. The bottom one, with the drawbridge, has a left-over strawberry plant that I didn’t have room for in my fruit garden. This one is going to be a real test, though, because I’ll probably have to actually water it (as opposed to waiting for God to do it for me). We’ll see!!!

Update 5/20/13:  The pansies are blooming!

Update 6/25/13: The castle has a strawberry (that I ate promptly after taking this picture).