my latest garden inspiration...

 So...I need a place to put our bamboo that we had been storing along the fence. 

The Jim Beam whiskey barrel seemed like a good place. 

As I put the poles in the barrel, I liked how it was looking.

Luckily, so did my hubby. :)

I transplanted enough artichokes to make a circle around the barrel,

which will buy us a good 2-5 years to figure out what to do with this space.

(The soil has been contaminated from years and years of rain water run-off

from the street and we don't want to plant edibles there until it's amended and rested.

The artichokes are my brain-child...let them flower;

they are beautiful and the bees LOVE them.)

This photo (above) is from the following morning...after a hard frost!

We haven't had frost in a long time. I hope the artichokes will be okay!

By evening, I was DELIGHTED to see the plants had perked up significantly -- even though it had only been in the 40's all day and it had rained. Hooray!

 The next morning, still perky!

I took this photo today. I trimmed the larger leaves away from the artichokes so they could focus their energies on rooting into their new home. So far, so good.

This weekend, I moved some onions around, and planted cabbage and celery starts. Piece by piece, it's slowly coming together.

I got my first compliment on the bamboo/barrel piece while I was transplanting a rosemary bush. Two new neighbors stopped by on their walk and gushed. Ha! I feel like such a garden hack...who is really lucky!