Here’s a time-lapse video of Miss Leyba putting together a 100 piece puzzle.
(Thank you, Tracey, for the awesome suggestion!)

VIDEO: For All You Non-Believers from Carrie on Vimeo.

And you thought I might have been exaggerating.

We’ve been busy gardening over in Spritzer Leyba Land, but before I tell you about the work we’ve done in the garden this spring, let me show you some photos from last summer.

See those bushes behind Miss Leyba? Turns out, they only bloom for two weeks each year and there they are, blooming and lovely! A couple days later all the flowers died and the bush transformed into a giant, overgrown hedge that blocked a view of the stairs… a super no-no when your toddler loves to sit there.

So, last May David ripped out the bush (turned out to be mostly dead with just a little bit alive on top) and we started planting a lovely little garden. Here it is today with several plants just starting to bloom and lots on its way:

David also built me a small raised bed for our vegetable garden. Here he is last year watering our newly planted tomatoes (that performed poorly due to the abnormally cool 2009 summer):

And here it is now with lots of sugar snap peas, lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes:

We also removed the bushes next to the veggie bed (behind David in the above photo). One of them had super sharp thorns and grew poisonous orange berries in the fall. The other “bush” was a spiky Live Oak tree that would grow to be twenty feet tall; definitely not a good fit for the space. Yes, there was a gorgeous rose bush, bit it was very overgrown, so we thought it better to start afresh with something new. Here is that bed today, a very work-in-progress sort of photo:

Those giant cabbages are from our winter garden; they just started forming heads, finally.

And here’s a photo of our little girl and AVID gardener! Trust me, I couldn’t be more pleased. We love working out in the yard together and I’m loving it!

(My, what a difference a year makes!)

I’ll post more photos as the summer progresses. We so enjoy working on the yard and transforming this house into a home. So glad you all are following along!