A Change in Life

I have been neglecting my blog for several weeks. I am sorry blog. And to my 3 followers. Life has taken a turn, for the best hopefully!

Due to personal reasons, I will not be remodeling my back yard. I will be working on a whole different one. We are moving. We do not know when, but in the next several months. If we get this one house we have looked at, I will be VERY busy when it comes to gardening and overall out door maintenance. But there is another house that has a wonderful yard and I would just have to keep it up. Once I know something, I will let ya know. But.....I have a wonderful front yard and back yard project that I am currently working on with my Mom.

My grandmother has a big yard and several years ago she spent $15,000 to have it re done. Being that my grandmother is over 80 years in age, she has not been able to keep up with it. Us kids and grandkids try to do our best to help. Now that my mom is only working one job, we have permission from Grandma to work on her yard.

Every Mother's Day, we buy my grandmother flowers for her garden and we plant them and do the spring time clean up of the yard and put out her garden gnomes and such. This year we will be doing that, but we have other things in mind as well. Planters, rocks, grass... And she also wants us to help keep up on things. So, until I have a new yard to work on, and even after, I will have my grandmother's gardens to work on.

One of my Grandmother's favorite garden statues. They sit near her Bleeding Hearts.

Part Two of Before Pictures

In Part One of Before Pictures, I showed my front yard. Not much that I needed to do with it. If I was actually in charge of my whole front yard, I actually would have done SO MUCH!

This is Part Two of Before Pictures. These are pictures of my back yard. There is A LOT that needs to be done with the back.

This is a picture of the main part of the back yard taken from the gate on the west side.


And now lets flip it! This is a picture of the other side of the yard!



The bike is already gone and the grill will be leaving us soon.... hopefully! Gotta get the money to buy a new one before the hubby will let me get rid of the old one. Anyone need a grill that needs some work???




The toys will eventually be put towards the back. That will be Grady's play area.




I plan on putting flag stone in the rest of the yard. Starting at the patio and moving back. Then I will put container gardens all over the place. We will also add a table and chairs and a fire pit! To be completely honest, the only reason we are really cleaning up the back is so we can have a fire pit. Shhhh.... Don't tell!



Dan's grass that grew too late!




My lil' Sheba Kitty! She loves the outside. We hope to be able to plant some catnip for her to have fun with!

It is spring in Colorado, which means there is snow. Lots of heavy, wet snow! Once the snow melts and things dry out just a little bit, I will be back there shoveling rocks and pullin weeds.

HAPPY OSTARA!

HAPPY OSTARA! Or also known as the first day of Spring!

Oh how I have been waiting for Spring! Warmer weather! Rain! Everything starts to get green before the summer heat comes and makes it all brown.

This is the first year that my son has been old enough to do sabbat/holiday fun. In our house, we celebrate the pagan sabbats and the traditional holidays. But Easter is not about Jesus in our house. It is about the Easter Bunny bringing chocolate! Just like at Christmas time, it is when Santa brings the good little girls and boys gifts. Not about Jesus! The Sabbats are our spiritual time to celebrate and the holidays are our materialistic time to celebrate. I was raised Catholic and my husband was raised Protestant... I think. So we still celebrate those holidays our own way.

This year, we dyed Ostara/ Easter Eggs! We let Grady just dive in!




It was so much fun! He still has dye on his hands!





And I hung plastic eggs from my roof. I got this great idea from reading a wonderful book I have called Sabbats: A Witch's Approach to Living the Old Ways written by Edain McCoy.

I bought a bag of 12 colored plastic Easter eggs at Wal Mart.

They already had holes in the top, so I did not have to make my own. The book suggests that you use a drill bit no bigger then on-sixteenth inch. And to keep the drill at a low speed so you do not melt the plastic.

Take embroidery floss or string and lace it through. I had mine different lengths. You can have yours at any length you would like.

Then hang them from a tree or bush in your yard. I hung mine from the roof because I do not have a tree and the eggs did not look all that great on the bush.




I am going to keep the Eggs up until after Easter. They are so easy to make and they look really great outside as a decoration!

What are different things that you do with your family for the Sabbat or Holiday?

First Phase of Front Yard Complete!

When I started on the front yard of the house, one side looked like this:






Now it looks like this!




The other side looked half done:





And now it looks done!





I worked VERY hard and long for 2 days, racking and shoveling and pulling weeds and carrying buckets of rock! I feel good!
The nice weather did not last long. It snowed the day after I took the "After" pictures. So until the snow melts, I will be doing my research on gardening. Almost done taking notes on Garden Witchery: Magick from the Ground Up by Ellen Dugan!

Part One of Before Pictures

This past week as been BEAUTIFUL in Colorado! It is spring weather. But unfortunately, March is our snowiest month and I do not plan on the nice weather lasting much longer. So, while the snow is melted and the temperature is up and sun shinning, I decided to take my "Before" pictures of my yard.



Now, I am starting with my front yard. My front yard is the easiest out of the two. Mainly because I live in a patio home and the HOA is suppose to have a landscaping company come out and take care of the "common grounds". Us, the home owners, are in charge of our own backyards. The landscaping company makes sure the grass looks good and the trees and most bushes are trimmed. That is it. Some of us home owners have taken it upon ourselves to fix up our rock beds and such.




Last fall I started moving the rocks from my back yard into my front yard rock beds. Before I started doing this, our rock beds were dirt beds with 5 rocks holding hands. Now, one side looks like a half done rock bed, thanks to me:)




As long as the weather stays nice, I do plan on filling my rock beds next week. I will need to pick up the trash and pull the weeds first. And eventually, I would like to put a couple planters out there. Maybe a wind chime.




This use to be a really nice "stepping stone" with moons and stars on it. As you can see, someone stepped on it. I got it at the Dollar Store.

All pictures were taken by me.

Garden Research

I truly do not know the first thing about gardening! Well... I know that the plant goes in soil and that you have to give it sun or no sun and you have to water it. That is about it! So I decided to do some research. Not only so I know what I am doing, but also to find what I want in my garden!

The only book I have read so far is Garden Witchery: Magick from the Ground Up by Ellen Dugan:




I love it! I am currently RE-reading it! Ellen writes about the different magickal properties of herbs and plants, How to incorporate color magick into your garden, different crafts you can make, and she also shares her dos and don'ts that she has come across while gardening. There is so much more in this wonderful book. I learned so much. I had no idea that there are climate zones? And a shade index? WOW!

The next book I am going to read is Gardening for Dummies 7 in 1 book:



I ordered this book off of Amazon.com last week and it should be showing up today! I am so excited! It has 7 of the Gardening for Dummies books in ONE!! So I will get to read all the basics, gardening design, roses, perennials, annuals, bulbs, and vegetables and herbs all in one! So excited!

Do you have a garden? What, if any, research did you do? Do you have any recommendations for me either mundane or pagan? I would love it if you could share! IF you could not tell... I am excited!

A Change in Topic

I started my lovely blog a little over a year ago. I started because my best friend, Lilith over at Crunchy Green Lovin' Mom, told me to! (She even set my blog up for me...shhhh... don't tell!)

I started doing the Bloggy Giveaways and then that stopped.

I did a couple reviews. I love doing reviews. I just did not do many.

I really thought about what I wanted my blog to be about. I have come up with idea after idea for over a year now and I finally decided!

I bought the book Garden Witchery: Magick from the Ground Up by Ellen Dugan. I bought this book 5 or 6 years ago. At the time I lived in a apartment in Downtown Denver, Colorado with no yard or balcony. Why would I pick up a book on gardening? Because something told me to. Something deep down inside told me that I would need it one day.

I did not start reading this book until 4 months ago. I was hooked! I am a slow reader so it took me some time to read it and I also took notes as I went along.

My husband, Dan, and I have been trying to re do our little yard for YEARS! We can never finish it! Something always comes up! One thing that definitely comes up is WEEDS! That is the ONLY thing that grows in the back yard. Dan tried to grow grass back there for years when he first moved into the house. It never worked. He tried almost everything. No grass. Only weeds. This past summer, we decided to either put down stamped concrete or flag stone in the entire back yard (it is only 16'x30' ish) and have container gardens. About a week after we decide this, grass started to grow in our backyard. Someone must have been seeding their yard and some flew into ours! It is in patches and it did not last, but I thought it was funny! It was like Mother Nature saying "I'll show you grass!" Dan was PISSED!

I have always loved gardening. My grandfather and I use to do it all the time when I was young. His back yard was always lush and green and beautiful! To be honest, that was really the last time I really gardened except for on Mothers Day when we plant my grandmothers flowers for her to kill... SERIOUSLY! She says she waters them, but they do not look that way! Back to the subject....

I consider myself a VERY new gardener. I have a yard that needs much work on it. Gretel's Modern Day Fairy Tale will now be a gardening journal of sorts. From now on, I will be sharing what I learn as I learn it, what things I did wrong in my garden, Before/During/After pictures of my backyard and any gardening I try to do.

And if anyone has any words of wisdom on gardening do's and don'ts or even on blogging (still very new at) PLEASE SHARE!!! I need all the help I can get!

I have to thank Lilith for getting me into the blogging:) My Grandfather, Fred, for introducing me to Mother Nature, and Ellen Dugan for writing such a wonderful book! I truly felt like I was sitting down talking with a friend as I read it!

So here we go! I hope you enjoy the ride!