Garden.

I. Love. My. Garden. I know, I'm weird. I should be blogging about all the cute things my kids are doing, and I do have pictures, and plan to do that, but what I really want to share is my beautiful garden.

Since we've had the playground outside right next to the garden, I've been able to spend a few minutes out there every day. Sometimes, it's half an hour, but most of the time it's pull a few weeds, plant a few seeds, harvest a bit, with an occasional 2 hour stint on a Saturday. The thing I love most about it is that it's just so dang cute.

Last night we ate (we being primarily Max and Pearl) our first handful of blueberries! Yum! I have a hard time picturing us EVER growing enough to have some actually make it to the house!
Carrots - they are a most popular vegetable. Every day the kids ask if they can have one... we eat a lot of baby carrots. But that's the point, right? Who cares that I will NEVER be putting carrots in a salad or cooking them... they are just for the kids to eat when they come into the garden.
I love my lettuce. It's so nice that it's not rotting in the fridge, when I'm ready, I just go pick a head and we eat it for dinner. So pretty too!
My strawberry plants are impressive... unfortunately, we haven't eaten a strawberry yet as some animal (maybe a racoon or squirrel) considers it his personal buffet. Sigh. Bird netting is temporary until Jared can figure something out better for me!
Aah, the peas... they're gone now, but we had a glorious several weeks in April eating handfuls of snow peas every time we went into the garden. Lots of salads with just garden lettuce and pea pods, so yummy! But don't try to put regular ranch dressing on, it ruins it. You have to do a homemade vinegarette:)
For the past week or two every time I need an onion, I just run out to the garden and pick one. The time was finally here, and yesterday I pulled one full bed out to cure (they have to be in the sun for 2 weeks to dry out so they'll store better). Saturday, I think that bed will be home to some purple bush beans and beets and MORE CARROTS!
Ok, seriously, if you were a ladybug, wouldn't you want to live here? This bed has garlic with baby lettuce growing up in the middle. My plan is to not buy lettuce any more. We'll see how it goes. I've had months at a time so far, but have to get the trick of planting more seeds even when the current lettuce isn't ready to harvest. I'm learning. The cool thing about the garlic and lettuce is that the lettuce likes the shade from the garlic and the garlic likes to keep it's roots cool, which the lettuce provides. Win Win!
I swear, the tomatoes I started from seed are more beautiful and healthy than the one I bought at Lowes. Totally worth it. This is the first year I've done the red plastic... so far it's been really good because we've had a cold spring and I think it's keeping the tomatoes warm.
I am in love with my cute potatoes. They were part of the winter garden this year, and some plants got frost damage and are suffering from some sort of fungus. About 4 of the yukon gold plants were pretty much gone, so today I thought I'd pull them just to see what we got. I was surprised to get a whole bowlful from 4 dead(ish) plants. Max was having SO MUCH FUN grabbing the potatoes out of the dirt, that we decided to pull 3 red/purple ones too. Amazing! I did potatoes last year, and they were certianly not this big when the plants were still so immature. I guess they really do like winter better, working harder underground than above, which, for potatoes, that's really what you want! Better than growing weeds all winter:)
Ok, my other favorite are the 3 sage plants that overwintered from last year. They were scrawny seedlings when I put them in, and now they're big and beautiful and they smell so good. The other thing I love is that they really attract the good bugs, fat fuzzy bumblebees and lots of ladybugs.

So, if you want to sit and enjoy nature, come on by! We'll let the kids run amuck and sit and drink lemonade and look at the garden:)