After eight months of construction, landscaping, and lots of waiting in between, our lot is finally landscaped and all dressed up. We still have other projects to come, from installing our garden shed to hooking up the tiny house to various backyard improvements, but I’m happy that this place now looks like a home. It had already felt like home, but now we have a garden and yard to play in.

At the beginning of July, we quickly planted a bunch of seedlings in our beds, hoping to get plants in the soil this summer before it wasn’t too late. Four weeks later, all the seedlings — and our beets, which were the only things we planted from seed — are doing pretty well. I had to rip out a number of nickel beans that died; I think it was a combo of the extreme heat around that time (a few days of 100 degrees) and because we’d pulled apart some of them, which our landscape designer recommended in order to get more plants out of what we bought, but sadly those didn’t make it. The new ones are doing better, though still not as good as, say, our crazy zucchini plants, but at least they’re standing and there’s new growth.