Our Garden

This year, everything started a little later than usual.  We had a very, very muddy yard.  When Mike was finally able to till the garden area, he looked like he might even go under with the tiller.  He didn't, and now we have a nice lovely garden patch. 

It's not the 1 acre garden we had growing up, but we've got lots of stuff in our little area - tomatoes, beans (a whole row of those, the girls insisted!), eggplant (no luck last year, but I wanted to try again this year), cucumbers, zuchini, basil, marigolds, sunflowers, a vinca (which Clara saw at Home Depot and had to have!).  I think that's all, but in reality, Mike is the master gardener.  I just like to admire and eat the "fruits" of his and the kids' labor.  I did think about doing some weeding the other day, but it was awfully hot and I'm sure one of the kids wanted me to play with them (always a handy excuse, right?).

 Gracie, working hard, as always.  Digging like her Daddy does, foot on the shovel.  

Clara was busy planting, too.  She was on bean detail and also helped with cucumbers (her favorite!) and squash. 

Daddy distributing seeds to plant.  He got smart this year and put popsicle sticks to mark where the plants were.  Well, it seemed smart until I looked up and saw John Michael pulling up all the popsicle sticks and then digging around for seeds!  I guess JM doesn't quite have the whole garden thing down yet.

So that's our little garden.  We haven't harvested anything yet, but the bean plants are big, I've seen flowers on the cucumbers and there are at least 4 green tomatoes on one plant.  Yipee!  

  

And I'm just realizing that we have harvested something - one of my favorite things - basil!  I love to add it to our tomato sauce, on top of pizza, or in salads.  It's so yummy.   I really missed it over the winter when we didn't get our plant inside before the first freeze.  

I'll post soon about our harvest from our "orchard!"