634

 It's been about a week and a half since we have moved in to our new place at 634, and I suppose I'm now used to things around here, and have been able to form some sort of a routine with E. What is new about this place, besides having no kitchen (until the 27 of Aug! URGH), is the fact that it comes with a garden and lawn. 

Now I don't really care for lawns especially because I remember reading they're not really good for the environment because they require a lot of water and don't contribute to the environment (e.g. no shelter for animals, no pollen for bees, etc.). But having a lawn still means somewhat taking care of it, even though I don't need to bother with cutting the grass because we hired a company to do it. So yesterday, the day after a Derecho wreaked havoc all throughout the Midwest, I spent something like 1hr+ picking up all the fallen branches and twigs off the lawn, because I had seen the neighbour opposite do it and assumed it was a thing people do. 

The fun part however, is the rest of the garden, and I am now obsessed with my new hobby even though it makes me hot and sweaty - gardening. As a correlated activity, we also bought a bird feeder, though it's been attacked non-stop by squirrels, and so my next task is to swap it out and get a squirrel-proof bird feeder:

I planted some beans a few days ago in some cedar planters that we got from Menards using starters that we purchased from Hartke Nursery:

And yesterday I planted this shrub that I purchased from Dauster Greenhouse:

It's called a Proud Berry plant, and I chose it over others because I saw that it was labelled as a native plant, though I now realise that there's another more stringent category of native plants, those are are specifically native to Missouri. The more you learn I guess. 

My goal is to eventually have a nice garden that helps support the wildlife in the area, and to cover up the weird bare patch you see in the picture above, so people can't stare into our living room. I'd also like to grow some vegetables from seed one day, though I have just purchased some broccoli starters from the O.K. Hatchery and Feed Store today. Fingers crossed that all of this works out, unlike the 10,000x other plants I've killed before when living in Singapore.