Our garden!

Last year we moved into a beautiful house that our church purchased for a parsonage.  One of the only things on our 'perfect house list' that our house doesn't have is a yard for the boys to play in... but it's not typical to have a yard in Japan, so we are fine.  We're spoiled with beautiful parks everywhere, anyway. ;)  But we do have a nice walkway that leads up to the front door.  The former owner had some landscaping, but after a year of doing nothing with it, it was overgrown with weeds and did not have the inviting look we wanted for our home.  So when we got back from home assignment last summer, it was time to tackle the front walkway and make it our garden.  We enlisted the help of a wonderful friend from church who has made gardening in Okinawa her hobby.  She continues to teach us how to plant, when to plant, and nearly every plant in our garden has come from hers!  Tara, we can't thank you enough for your help and joining us in our adventure!
It has been a really fun experience over the last few months, so here are some pictures of the process...

Before (looking from the door to the street)
 
and AFTER!!!

Here's another before shot looking toward the front door (this is after hours of weeding, by the way)...
 

 

and AFTER!!!  Quite an improvement, don't you think?
 
So here are our pictures of the process....
First we had to make our dirt better... so we dug up a lot of the dirt we had and mixed it with many kinds of 'good dirt'... this took about 4 hours... it made our small space seem very large. ;)

 

Then we laid out covering to minimize weed growth and covered it in mulch...

 
 Noah found a praying mantis friend during the process. :)

And then we started planting!

We've been slowly adding plants as we buy them or as Tara gives us more from her garden. :)

My favorites are our water plants... we even have fish in one of the pots!  We are loving the blessing of living in a house and having a small garden to take care of... we pray that God would use this garden to help us get to know our neighbors a little better.  I also love the time of watering our garden every day - it has become one of my favorite prayer times. :)