A garden story

We moved to Orem in 2011. In our rental, there was a beautiful garden! Everything was all ready to go, so we took advantage of it!

It was so much fun! And we got lots out of it!

These pictures are from our first harvest. During our 2nd year living there, we decided to plant turnips, just to see if they would grow. They, in fact, did grow. We were so happy with our turnips! Then Chris tried to make turnip soup. It was awful. After the first bite, we both decided that turnips were definitely not something we would try ever again.
So, in our minds, this gardening thing was no big deal! If you just plant things and water them, they grow, and then you harvest and eat and it's fabulous!
Then we moved to Idaho Falls, and were very sad to find that our yard had a lot of shade during the day, making it difficult to plant a garden. I tried doing a window sill garden for my herbs. It didn't work that well. But then, the city of Idaho Falls came to our door and said that we needed to have our apple trees trimmed in order to make way for the power line. I asked them to trim really far, because I hated that apple tree. I'm not sure if it was one apple tree or two, but at any rate, it had two trunks and looked terrible. They asked if they should remove it. So, low and behold, part of our yard now gets sun!!

Chris took a day off of school to make us a garden.

And Chris and his helpers made this:

And then we started planting! We thought that it would be fabulous like our last garden in Orem. However, we had a water problem last year. This happened basically because we have no experience in actually making a garden, and my parents were on their mission in Cincinnati, so they couldn't help. Thus, we were on our own!

However, the "expert" has helped (A TON!!) and, after I worked for about 7 hours this past weekend, along with some boys down the street (because of this) and now our garden now looks like this:

I never thought I would be so excited about dirt! Yay! So my dad will come help with our finishing touches next week, and we will plant! Davis is very excited and really really wants to plant cherry tomatoes, because he thinks it's so fun to eat them off the vine! I can't disagree with that!
Anyway, I have learned that, although gardening is hard an tiring, it is a lot of fun, especially when you have kids to do it with you. I also think it's a wonderful thing to teach kids how to do! We're excited for our harvest!

Thoughts

I always get a little nostalgic when I move.  Amid the crazy packing, I have had a few thoughts.

Things that we are looking forward to in Idaho:

• Chris experiencing a new job that is really what he wants to do
• Living so close to family--my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles
• Having a house with so much room and so many possibilities of expansion in a great neighborhood
• Not having to rent a storage unit across town
• No more annoying dog next door
• No more neighbors downstairs to complain and ask things like, "Could you take your baby somewhere else when he cries?"  Seriously.
• No more laundry room in the garage.  Cold in the winter!
• Being able to stay in the car for the entire entrance and exit of our home.  We don't have a garage door remote opener.  Bummer.
• Having two bathrooms.  On the main level.

Things that we will miss about Utah:

• Living close to family--we will miss Taylor and Katie and Carter and Whitney
• Our ward and the friends in our ward
• The great callings that we have had and people we have been able to serve with
• Living close to the Murdock Canal Trail (mostly Chris, but it is pretty cool!)
• Living close to Kneader's (dorky, I know . . . )

This home in Orem has been the place where:

• We have had all of our belongings under one roof.  For a short amount of time.
• We have had our first guestroom, which was super fun, especially when we got our parents to come and visit!
• We have gone through the entire in vitro process.  I can't express how grateful I am that we lives relatively close to the clinic and to my school at the time.
• We were able to dress up Davis's nursery and invite him to our little family
• We had our first garden adventures (yeah, not going to happen this year . . . )
• We had many many adventures with many many beloved people

All in all, we have enjoyed this home and the many wonderful things that have come from it.  This home was definitely an inspiration from the very beginning, when I was SICK of us living on top of each other and decided that we needed to GET OUT of Provo, fire our realtor, and move on.  By answer to sincere prayer (or maybe we had even given up on praying for it at this point), the girl who came to look at our condo said that she was interested in having her parents buy it if that was okay with us.  We decided it was.  And could they move in for a month and pay us rent in the meantime?  Sure!  We also found a perfect spot, close to the school I worked at, that had a reasonable rent price, and seemed perfect to fit our needs.  And the landlord seemed like a pretty decent guy too!  Sometimes, I swear that our Heavenly Father has a real sense of humor!  :)

We will miss you, Orem, and hold a special place for you in our hearts.  However, we are excited for our new adventure!