Wish List: Avant Garden

A few weekends ago, Chris and I decided to plant our own garden for summer. Roma and cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, green onion, cilantro, cucumber, zucchini, summer squash, watermelon... it's a small plot but has everything needed for delicious, summery meals. I've also got my eye on a few blueberry bushes to frame out the back end of the plot with a little something sweet.

My cute husband planting seeds -- I love him so much!

So far, the garden just sits there, so I can't say it has been a fun or stressful venture. Little green sprouts have just started to peek up, and soon we will be weeding, watering, and tending to the young plants as they grow. It's funny, I've always admired my mother's garden, and I could list off the names of dozens of flower and tree species, but I've never had the desire to garden until now. Perhaps it's just one of those things that develops with age... now that I'm married and living in a house of my own, I find myself reading more about landscaping, gardening, and the like. Which is exactly what inspired this week's Wish List...

1. The weathered, graphic numbers of this zinc thermometer from Terrain are wonderful and would be easy to read from a distance.  2. A pretty bow adorns ModCloth's Fun in the Sun hat.  3. The lines of these herbery stakes from Anthropologie are perfectly understated, and the white porcelain would really pop in a green garden.  4. As much as I love it, I couldn't spend $48 galvanized steel watering can. With a quick search on Etsy or eBay, though, you could stencil a number on a vintage can for a cheap & easy DIY project.  5. West Elm's recycled glass lanterns would be so pretty strung along a fence.  6. The My Garden five year garden planner would be an interesting keepsake once filled, and that cover design is gorgeous. 7. Grow Great Grub also seems like a pretty useful garden-to-dinner table book, complete with organic pest control and fresh-picked recipes. 

Have you ever gardened before/do you have any tips to share? Chris and I are pretty much learning as we go along, which is part of the fun, but I hope we actually have plants to harvest -- we've already had to replace the tomato plants because of frost. I can't wait to be able to pluck something straight of the vine and make dinner with it later that day... fingers crossed.