Ashley B. Illustration

Thought it'd be fun to document the bog garden my wife helped me install in our backyard! After doing this I can see why there are very little resources on it, because only the truely insane would make an in-ground bog garden vs a dozen or so planter gardens lol. Oh well!!

April 19th, 2025 Anyway, here's the start from last year. The goal was to put it in last year but we focused on other projects. Also featuring my little gator guy I got to go in the bog.

April 21st, 2025 We got it nicely cleaned up/edged, and about a foot down with 10 more inches to go. Yay we hit rocks. It was at this point we paused for the year.

April 4th, 2026 A year later and we made progress!! We lined it with bricks to make it higher since it was a PAIN to dig any further.

May 4th, 2026

5 bags of peat moss later with sweat and tears and she is ready! We let her sit for 3-4 weeks before adding the plants. Shout out to my dad for the rocks.

If anyone tells you these in-ground bogs are cheap, they are lying. Go look up the cost for 1 big ol bag of peat moss.

June 2nd, 2026

Went to a native nursery about an hour away that had carnivorous plants and got my sarracenia's! I'm so happy, and so far they are doing really well. I put a small fence around the bog to prevent small critters from digging around in here.

More holiday Cards -> 2019 and 2020 I wanted to feature our pets, so I made a holiday card that was strictly the kitties, and the next was for the scale babies.

For the kitty-themed holiday card, I also included a little illustration of brumating sasha.

2018 was the year we bought our house, so I wanted to commemorate that with our holiday card that year. Kind of the same vibe as the previous year, especially with the colors. 🎄

Speaking of holiday cards, working on finishing mine up!! one year (maybe, possibly) I won't wait til the last possible minute x-x

Here is the Holiday card that I drew back in 2017! My third one, and my second one that I did digitally. I tried something different style wise, keeping it simple and I still really like it to be honest! I'd do it a bit differently now but overall I still like this.

Continuing the holiday card train, here is the second one I ever made in 2016 - my first time going digital! It was definitely a learning experience. I did both outside and inside, which was a PAIN (especially when dealing with a general, big-name print store). It was an actual folding card too, and on thick glossy stock.

I love dala horses and the Scandinavian holiday theme. I def wanna do a newer version sometime in the future!

It's that time of the year! While I'm working on finishing up my holiday card, here's the first I ever made that started the annual tradition.

The end of August we were able to visit the Philly Lantern Show just before they finished for the year - it was so beautiful, we went just as it was getting dark so we could see the transition.