We just used whatever was on hand.

This photo came from American Meadows.The garden is full, full, full and little bit wild-looking.

We did have a lot of big mature plants like this at our old house and I can’t wait to get back to that stage of gardening here..If you’d love a full, easy-to-deal-with, little-work-lotta-reward garden like this one too, but don’t have thousands to spend on it, here are our tips!.Shop at the right time.. We bought all of our plants on the May long weekend, which is generally considered here to be the “gardening weekend”.

That’s when the nurseries and big box stores had all their blowout deals for the season on and we were able to get a lot of good basic plants for a steal.The big box stores don’t typically have the selection that the nurseries do, but they do have some great prices.

I prefer to shop early in the season, rather than at the end of the season because the plants are usually in better shape and I get to watch how they’re doing for the rest of the Summer.

Shopping during that one weekend when all the deals happen allows me to still get a great price.. Buy what everyone else has or what you’ve used before and you know works well..My parents had ordered a basket of all different chocolate-dipped things from a local store as sort of a New Year’s and also a “here, you might need this with the new baby” gift for us.

We had a ton of fun trying all the interesting treats and I thought I’d share some of the ideas and inspiration they gave me.. With Valentine’s day coming up, it gives us all a great excuse to eat a little more chocolate than usual, although I honestly don’t think you need much of an excuse.Anytime is a great time for chocolate.. Did you know that studies have shown that if everyone consumed 33% more chocolate, that world peace would be here within 92.5 days?

statement is probably not true.Anyway, chocolate is good.. With all the ideas listed below, you can either melt your chocolate in the microwave, or over a double-boiler.