I’ve never gardened before. Truth be told I am not a fan of creepy-crawlies which tend to be found in the ground and on plants, etc. Bill was offered a deal on earthboxes and wanted to try his hand at tomatoes and peppers. He planted them in mid-March and now we have our first red tomatoes. Yay! These are our cherry tomatoes and if you look hard, you can see a bunch of little green tomatoes just waiting to turn red. We also have regular sized tomatoes that are still green but a decent size. Our pepper plants have really sprouted up in the last two weeks too. We should get a nice yield from those plants. This is all very exciting for a first time gardener.

Moving to California (and having a backyard) has given us an opportunity to try new things. We’ve also been trying to live a greener lifestyle. Our shower seems to take forever to heat up, so we bought a large 5 gallon bucket to collect the water that would otherwise get wasted. We’ve used that water for our garden and the flowers that I’ve planted in the backyard. I also use some of the water on my indoor plants.

We’ve also started to compost. The City of San Jose offered us a deal on a compost bin and offers free composting workshops. So we’ve set it up and have a little bin on the counter where we collect our compost scraps every day. It’s working out pretty well so far. It will be at least another two months before we have useable compost, but our soil can really use the nutrients so it will be worth the wait.

Finally, I think I have a hydrangea bush in my backyard. What do you think? Fingers crossed that’s what it is; I love hydrangeas.