Ok! Let’s see how this goes. My first blog. I am a Realtor (nearly 13 years)…however, gardening and photography has ALWAYS been my passion. Not that I’m not passionate about my career, I love it!! But, I feel my true creativity and love for something that I do is with nature and capturing it on ‘film’. I’ve taken 2 photography courses in the past with my 35mm camera and did take some really nice shots too (so I think) but never did go anywhere with that passion. Over the years I kept at gardening…flowers and shrubs. But 3 years ao, hubby and I, decided to try and grow some tomatoes. We picked up this cute little greenhouse from Costco and placed it in the 360sqft concrete pad of a backyard at our semi-detached home. We used to chuckle as we often referred to it as the green greenhouse – yes, we are nerds.

So, we got some dirt and planted everything by seed…tomato, peppers, dill weed (I heard this was a good fly repellant), chives and sunflowers. We did do pretty good with it. The tomato plants grew well and they yielded a fair number of small tomatoes. The pepper plants grew pretty good too but not much of a harvest. Just one or 2 little tiny ones. Dill weed did fantastic and I think they did keep some flies away. Hard to tell, we get so many!! Chives did great. And the sunflowers did awesome. I read that they attract earwigs so, we kept them on the back of the property away from the house and garden…just in case. Well, that was the last year I grew sunflowers. Earwigs love them!!!! And I don’t like earwigs.  What I did like, was going out to the garden in the mornings. The fragrances were so fresh. We would cut chives and dill weed, bring them in the house and cook with the scrambled eggs. THAT smell going through the house was so delicious!!!

So, let me back up a little….in the spring of 2013, we were in the process of just finishing up the build of our new home during evenings and weekends as we both have full-time jobs.  And we added growing a little farm on top of our busy lives. But its something we both wanted to do. Plus, sometimes vegetables can become very costly at the grocery store!! So, thought we’d give it a shot on a very teeny scale, save a few dollars at the supermarket plus its very relaxing, therapeutic!

The end of June was moving day for us, plants and all. The green greenhouse was set up in the middle of the back yard along with some small raised planters we built and purchased some pots at the dollar store. I was so in love with our little garden. It was an amazing feeling. We were completely addicted. And it just kept getting better.

I hope you do continue following our site. I never really thought I’d be doing this but I must say, I’m really enjoying it. I cannot wait to share our gardening experiences since we started in 2013 up to today. AND to show you how we got our name, the Black Greenhouse!