This really isn't the best picture, but I was feeling a much needed moment of gratitude when I took it. Basically since I've started working in a nursery, and probably before that too, I've been feeling so bad about the condition of the yard. There's so many weeds and tree suckers everywhere. But at this moment I looked over the fence and saw how gorgeous the trees were on the other side. You can also see some haze to the air. There's smoke blowing in from North Georgia forest fires, which makes me ridiculously sad. We're in a drought right now. But anyway, I felt very grateful that this is my backyard. A lot of people don't have this gorgeous view.

I put a lot of work into that raised bed/flower bed area you can see in the picture today. And man it feels good. In the picture, it just looks like a typical leaf covered area. But today, I watered down the rock hard soil, tilled it up and added mushroom compost. I pulled out the mint and lavender in the raised bed and raked out a TON of old roots. I added mushroom compost to that as well. I put leaves on top to make another layer of compost and also to keep out leaves.

I'm going to completely redo that area in the spring. I need to actually get a plan together instead of just buying what catches my eye. Because realistically, that's everything. My idea right now is to do herbs in pots, and possibly use that raised bed for annuals.

I have officially been accepted to Gwinnett Tech! :) I went ahead and signed up for two classes: Small Scale Food Production and Woody Ornamental Plant Identification. I was going to sign up for soils, but apparently I need a prerequisite. They told me to wait until orientation, but I know how it works, so I just did those two for now since I have a high interest in those two areas. My orientation is a week from today. I have quite a busy end of year, but I'm looking forward to it!