in the garden, lately

i never thought of corn plants as beautiful before, but they are quite striking.

my helper :)

cuss boom bang!  that used to be a zucchini flower!

i hate YOU....

we're getting excited!

as spring has started to shine around here, we've been thinking of our remaining weeks as a family of two. our (unofficial) count is at nine weeks to go.

this is my last week at work. (for the next foreseeable years) i'll finally be a stay at home mom and housewife. i'm constantly thinking of all the things i need to do or get for the nursery before audrey arrives, but i guess that's what baby showers are for :) i've picked out a bassinet already and am deciding which kitchen cupboard would be best suited for binkies, bottles and bibs.

i've already planned out this year's vegetable garden and it should be planted in the next few weeks. i'm keeping it small and simple this year with green beans, cucumber and last year's vivacious tomato plants. i've already bought an assortment of sunflower and daisy seeds to plant in the remaining beds to brighten them up and i'm also going to pot some mint in a container for iced tea. maybe within five years everything will finally be completed and i can sit and relax in my maturing dream garden. :)

michael has been so understanding these last few months. he doesn't mind getting water or apples (or less healthy things) for me from the kitchen while i'm all propped up on the couch. he doesn't say anything about the dishes piling up in the sink or that the floors really needed to be swept days ago or about the sweatpants i've been wearing all week. instead he gives me kisses on the forehead and calls me "little mama" and rubs my tummy. how lucky am i? i honestly couldn't imagine anyone i'd rather have in the delivery room with me.

the vegetable of my labor!

i wanted to show you all my first harvested zucchini before i chopped it up for my salad. :) i now truly appreciate how nature works and constantly surprises. all i did was plant something, give it water and it grew and gave me a wonderful (and crunchable!) vegetable! seriously, how amazing is that?!? last saturday i attended a composting seminar (with maria and dionne, holla!) put on by our local water district and was amazed how efficient nature is at recycling itself. did you know that the inside of a compost heap can get as hot as 140 degrees? all by itself! amazing! i can't wait to garden completely organic and have my own compost bin. i dream of stuff like this now, weird.

here's a zucchini flower at full bloom.

hmm, i think i'm going to try to plan my garden a little better next season. i'm having a bit of a spacing issue here.

grapefruits, ripening in the sunshine. :)

i wanted to show everyone that i'm very talentless in begonias. wow, can you even tell that it's a begoina? if you're wondering what i'm talking about, its that sorry looking one on the right. hmm, my ivy's looking a little bleachy too.

oh and sorry about the low-grade cell phone photos. :)

mayday!

i thought i'd post some updates on the veggie patch since i haven't posted any pictures since i planted them a month ago. :)


here's the zucchinis. unfortunately i don't have a before picture but they've really been growing like crazy. i might have to try and- whoa, wait a second... what's that...?


(cue extreme close up) a zucchini! already?! mmmm, i can almost smell that zucchini bread baking...


i've given the tomatoes their trellises and the cherries have already started a few vines.  nothing to eat yet though.  :(


our peaches are fuzzy and numerous.  i'm going to need a lot of recipes by july, any ideas???

come on in, the garden is fine!

oh i wish...

...that this was my gardening shed. (i'll take the sweet little kitty too!) instead though, i've been thinking of building a worktable in my garden. i have a large area along the brick wall that is too shady to grow veggies and i think it would be great to be able to transplant so easily. instant clean-up is just a hose blast away! since our fence is brick, i was thinking of using a lattice propped behind the worktable where i could attach tools and supplies. i was also thinking of painting an ugly old bookshelf and using that to store extra soil, pots, and my watering can. i'm hoping it will be a functional and enjoyable project. :)

groundbreaking.

happy march!

deciding it was time to finally start on my veggie patch, i made a lot of progress in the past few days by tilling the soil and cleaning out the trash. many milk bottle caps and very annoyed earthworms later, here are my results. :) i dug down nearly two feet because i wanted to be absolutely sure there wasn't anything down there to taint the soil. at one point though i'll admit that i was pretty nervous as i pulled clods of dog hair out of the ground. i thought for sure i was digging into some forgotten unmarked pet gravesite. fortunately, it turned out to be what i think was an old dog bed. (whew! narrow miss!) it's strange digging into a yard you're not familiar with and finding odd objects, it's almost like taking a course in anthropology. (i can't tell you what fabulous things i deduced about the previous owners because i'm not a certified anthropologist. i can tell you though that for some reason they liked to rip the labels off their water bottles. hmm... discuss.)

here is the result of my efforts so far. i've already had a casualty in the form of an ancient hoe that michael's dear grandmother gave me for my birthday. fortunately it only snapped in the middle so it's still quite usable.

joey approves with the improvements so far. i had to clean the dirt off of his curious muzzle this morning and spotted the dirty evidence of digging on his paws a few times now. he's done a good job of keeping me company. :D

here is my comfort during my breaks. homemade iced tea and the second half of the half-blood prince, (...which by the time this post was published, i had finished and almost cried at the end even though i had read the series once before. oh dear).