June’s goal is all about gardening! I really enjoy gardening – when it’s convenient for me! I don’t always pay attention to my plants and beds on a regular basis. This month is dedicated to learning, maintaining, and enjoying my garden (my yard as a whole actually)!

Related: January – Drink more water

Still drinking lots and lots of water (85% of the time). I am becoming more aware of when my body is telling me I’m thirsty. When I get a hunger, I am opting to have a glass of water instead of filling my face with extra calories. Makes a huge difference.

Related: February – Zero alcohol

Summer is arriving soon, so a chilled spiked sparkling water is very refreshing! I am maintaining my conservative alcohol intake and not going overboard on consumption. No hangovers is always a good thing!

Related: March – Spending Freeze

It seems our hard-earned dollars are going to our vehicles lately! Another $580 gone for truck repairs! It’s simple to watch your spending when so much is going to surprise expenses! Personally, I’m afraid to spend frivulously just in case another catastrophe happens!

Related: April – Get moving

I’ve been a little stressed lately (parenting, work, life) so I look forward to my daily walks and occasional runs. An evening run really clears my head and helps ease a stressful day. I haven’t clocked huge distances during my runs, but I’m slowly getting back into it. One step at a time!

Related: May – Healthy Eating

Making a conscience effort to adopt a healthy lifestyle is easier said than done. This is something I’ve been working on for a long time (off and on) and I can never stick to it for any significant length of time. I will be great one week – planning meals, snacking wisely, and sticking to my guns. But then the weekend comes and I completely fall off the wagon – eating greasy, fatty foods, making hasty meal decisions instead of choosing healthier options, and just throwing up my hands in defeat. So here’s to maintaining the healthy (80/20 is reasonable) and ditching the junk!

June – All About Gardening

I truly do enjoy gardening! Creating a beautiful landscape of blooms and greenery is thoroughly rewarding. But it isn’t easy (or cheap!) to turn an empty area of property into a living work of art.

Let’s be honest here – I don’t pretend to be an expert (at anything really), so please don’t take my so-called knowledge to heart.

Having free range to do whatever I want with regard to plants and the such has only been feasible since having our own home. I don’t remember helping in the garden while growing up, so I was stoked when I could call the shots (with a little assistance from my husband, of course) for our own yard!

However, my horticultural know-how is limited. It’s only since moving into our current home seven years ago that I’ve begun to show more serious interest.

Our back yard faces north, so researching shade-loving perennials was necessary. I don’t buy a whole lot of annuals (waste of money), so opting for the plant variety that would return from year to year seemed like a better choice.

It’s quite overwhelming, all the plant varieties, when you visit a greenhouse! So don’t be afraid to ask for help when making your selections. There’s no shame in getting sound advise from an expert!

One of my absolute favourite perennial is the Hellebores. These beautiful flowers begin to bloom when there is still snow on the ground and their unique and hardy flowers remain through until fall. I have three varieties of this plant and I’m always on the hunt for more!

Planning and executing a forever flower bed is a long-running task. My backyard landscaping looks incomplete and empty at the moment. But plants take a while to fill in, so it always seems unfinished. Patience really is a virtue when it comes to gardening. It can take years to perfect the look of your garden oasis!

Selecting the flowers, planning the look – hell, even planting, is the easy part! Maintenance is a weekly (sometimes daily) chore that not many folks look forward to! This is where I need to improve. I am gung-ho to clean up my yard in Spring and see what’s started to sprout and which plants need to be replaced. But the pain-staking task of weeding, trimming, dead-heading, and watering is what I’m focusing on. Work in progress!

Luckily my husband takes care of most of the yard (grass-cutting & weed-whacking) work. But we collaborate on our outdoor living areas in order to make our yard a place for the whole family to enjoy.

Last year we added an outdoor fireplace so we can have “camp outs” (as my daughter calls them) and roast marshmallows! This year, we expanded the sitting area, be adding a gazebo for shelter from soft rains and the damn mosquitos!

The possibilities really are endless when it comes to your backyard oasis!

Crap, I’m getting off topic – sorry!

Since we’ve invested more into our garden (not a whole lot to be honest), we need to make more of an effort to actually use it. Far too often we choose to sit inside and watch TV instead of enjoying the great outdoors and making memories with our daughter.

Let me recap on my goals for getting more in tune with my gardening this month (since I rambled on and on)!!

• Keep up with the weeding, watering, trimming, etc – so the flower beds don’t look unkempt.
• Do the research on new plants before buying. No hasty purchases.
• Maybe help a bit with the grass-cutting. Hubby doesn’t need to do it all!
• Be patient. Watch and wait. It takes time for plants to reach maturity.
• Enjoy the outdoors and make an effort to sit outside, have a fire and soak up some quality family time.
• Relax. Breathe. Take it all in. And rejoice in all the work it took to achieve such a beautiful thing. (Corny – but true)

Raise a glass to a healthy growing season!