Watch the Lazy Garden Grow

And so the garden grows! What started as a plot of dirt, weeds, and volunteer sunflowers has now sprung into burgeoning tomato plants, jack-and-the-beanstalk sized sunflowers, nasturtium, and onions. The pumpkins will be planted in June wherever there aren't sunflowers.

Basically, all that has been done since you last saw us...

Mulch. For easy maintenance, coco mulch covers the ground around the plants and beds. Mulch helps keep weeds and snails OUT and moisture IN.

Water. There wasn't much rain these last several weeks, so we've had to pay more attention to watering. But soaker hoses are a lazy option.

Enjoy. It's a lazy garden...

And, in the distance, against the wall, the sweet peas climb! Even though there wasn't a lot of rain, it's been overcast, so the delicate sweet peas have had a chance to thrive without the sun frying them.

With very little monitoring, we've created a quiet place to rest while gardening with the delicate scent of sweet peas wafting through the air.

To bring that lovely scent inside in a spectacular way < even when you don't have a lot of flowers, try this easy arrangement < peas (and frozen in this case!) in the vase of water to kick the beauty up a notch without much effort.

[ Phase I ]

Gardening can be as lazy as you want it to be. As we say in our book, if your garden is one pot of flowers, let it be just that! But, if gardening gives you joy - as it does Judie and I - the time we spend tending our gardens is nurturing us as well as creating a lovely accent to our homes.

We've both been busy with the book until just recently, so we got a little behind on things. But, no worries, even when your goal is to have a spring harvest of delicate sweet pea flowers and you're 2 or 3 months late planting them, the Lazy Way to deal with it is just go for it!

Judie let this plot of land go to "seed and weed" after the last fall harvest. The only solution was to rip out the weeds and start from scratch.

But, the Lazy Way to start from scratch is to honor the seedlings that have already started on their own. Some hearty sunflowers are already coming through, so the weeds were cleared around these "survivors"! More sunflowers will be added and pumpkins too, all of which will bear beauty this fall in this one part of the garden. She has added tomatoes now, which will bear fruit quite soon in California.

For some spring splendor, Judie is lazily putting aside the planting "guidelines" that says sweet peas should have already been planted. Even though it's late, she loves sweet peas and is creating an area to support and showcase them…however long they end up blooming!

After clearing the area, she looked around her yard for inspiration and found a bench that had been languishing in an overgrown part of the yard. She used it as a focal point and springboard for the design. Once the garden is thriving, she'll use the bench to rest when gardening and to enjoy the fruits of her labor. She decided to add an umbrella to give it a little pizzazz, and needed shade in the summer. Then, she added some lattice, hopeful that the sweet peas will need something to climb up soon.

Judie bought the bare wood lattice at the hardware store but quickly brushed on some watered down paint to give it an aged look so that it would look nice against the aged wall, with the aged accents in the garden.

It's easy to do: just take some light green paint, add water, take a big brush, and sloppily paint it on. Instant aging!

She also created a corner in this area for her newly acquired bunny, Jeffie, who came home from the pet store when she realized that her husband wouldn't go for the Chihuahua she had had her eye on. [Note: the Lazy Way to deal with a potential marital conflict…compromise!]

So, join us as we watch the Jeffie's neighborhood, the Lazy Garden, as it grows….and see if sweet peas will make it in California - and how long they'll last -- when planted at the end of February! This area which began looking just like a bunch of dirt will shape up into a beautiful spring mini-plantation…so come back and watch it bloom into something very special - the Lazy Way!

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