Garden update

So, now that I'm done shopping online, I figured it would be the best bet to update you all on my garden. (Since I'm sure you've been wasting away hours wondering what's going on in my backyard.) The garden looks pretty good, even more now that I cleaned it up a bit today. Bolting broccoli, who needs it?

I am excited to say that, though I have more bugs that last year, things still look good. Tonight at dinner we had all of the vegetables from our garden... well, ok, not quite all. But we had broccoli, beans, carrots, lettuce, and peas from our garden. The cucumber and tomatoes aren't quite ready yet. I did spray some soap water on the black bug infestation, so we'll see if that helps business. Luckily, the bugs have gravitated toward the flowers and not the vegetables. I can deal with dead nasturtiums... not so with anything else.

Ground cherry husks, sort of blurry, but cool.

We'll see what they turn out to be.

Gavin after he "puck" some lettuce and a carrot. It is fun to see the boys so excited about vegetables. He swears that he loves squash, now that it is growing in our garden, yet I can't get him to eat it at the table.

Some Strawberry speckled lettuce that was the hit of the garden this year. So fun to grow (since I don't have any hungry rabbits around), and looked very cool. Plus, it was tasty too.

I have to say that I am most proud of my little tomatoes that I started from seed. I have no idea what kinds they are now, but there are three and they are starting to bud (tiny as they are). What's also cool is something I bought called a ground cherry. It is supposed to be treated like a tomato, growing style, but it is a sweet fruit with a husk like a tomatillo. I have two growing really well, and today I just found three more that survived my neglect. So, I've moved those into sunnier location sto see ho they do. They are a very pretty plant and, though I have no idea what they'll produce and what I'll use them for, I'd recommend the plant just for fun.

Ground cherry: Very pretty foliage as far as I'm concerned.

Even if the fruit turns out to be weird.

There are tiny cucumbers growing, so hopefully there are enough to pickle... as pickles demand high esteem in the Maclean household. (Helen's are always better than mine, but she's been doing it longer.) And a few of my tiny, tiny pepper plants have developed blossoms. We'll see how they last between the boys pronouncing them "weeds" and the summer sun. (Thank God for Deb, our neighbor, who waters our plants when we are away... usually for the hottest months of the summer.)

There are also lots of beans growing and blossoming, so hopefully they will survive and we'll have lots to freeze like last year. I enjoy just watching everything grow and develop. The zinnias that I planted are starting to blossom, not as many survived as I had hoped, but I always forget how things hang on and grow quite quickly (being neglected all the while).