Gardening Time

Remember way back when when we moved and we were so excited about this house having a garden? Well a year and half later, we are finally getting around to making some real use out of it.  We considered planting last spring, but then we could not find anyone to care for it over the summer months while we were stateside even with the idea of having the caretaker harvest everything for their own family. I hope our gardening isn't restricted to this every other year routine--we'll see. We have turned the soil many times over in the last year trying to keep the weed population low but that has been the extent of our efforts.

The first of April, we worked the ground again and planted spinach and kale seeds. However, some pesky birds got to them and we had our first garden fail.

It was a cool and rainy April so we waited until May when we had some starter plants in hopes that they would be big enough to not tempt the birds. We planted tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers and lettuce. The birds again got to the lettuce and enjoyed eating several plants to the ground. On top of that we had a day of thunderstorms and hail that threatened to destroy everything. Almost fail. My sweet potatoes might be a fail as they still have not come up yet, but at least the white potatoes are growing strong.

We also bought a lemon tree and blueberry bush(!!)--well, not so much tree, and not so much bush--but maybe in a couple of years both of those will yield a harvest to satisfy our family.

Repotting our new plants

This weekend we had lots of weeding to do after more rain. We then added to our garden some cucumbers, parsley and zucchini. It's fun to get our hands in the dirt and be together as a family. If for nothing else, it is therapeutic to be outside and a great opportunity to learn together. Hopefully, come summer we can say we were at least partially successful with our first family gardening attempt!

Our little garden...I dare not post pictures of neighboring gardens for sheer embarrassment of ours.

If we prove to have black thumbs in the garden, at least I know I am good with flowers...