The Garden

We planted our garden fairly late. Our veggies are taking their sweet time to grow, but with the sun and less rain, it's happening. 

I let the garden turn into a weed haven with all the rain (because who can weed in the rain..?) and had a massive job of cleaning it all up. 

I had never weeded like that in my life. I actually don't think I ever weeded anything much before. A total shock to all, I know. My first round of weeding looked like me hacking through a forest, chucking massive weeds left, right and center and then going through again for the finer work. My thighs burned.

But look...Spinach!

And carrots! Teeny tiny little greens. I almost weeded them by accident. 

My favourite- beets! C'mon guys, grow!

It's hard to weed and such with the girls outside with me, well, mostly Ellie. Sometimes a bottle and cracker in her playpen with a few toys keeps her happy for a while. But then she wants out and crawls around. She crawls around the garage where I can't see her and find the dirt clumps left from my shoes...I pick her up only to see a smile of dirt in her mouth! 

Wren mostly jumps from stone to stone around me and sings little songs and plays games in her head. 

Nana gave us peas to sprout (we did that ahead of time in a dish) and then planted them out here with chicken wire for them to cling to. They make me feel like I'm really doing something right.

The dirt is basically clay-like and atrocious. Kenton and I literally knew nothing about planting a garden. We (okay mostly me because I have been the only one tending it, haha), have learned a lot so far. And it's only July. Every time we see something that needs improvement, we smile and shrug and say, "Oh well, first year garden. Next summer we'll be smarter". 

We are also encouraged that if these poor vegetables can push through this nasty old dirt and grow, then we didn't do so bad after all for our first time around.

Hey! Tomatoes!

My parents planted the tomatoes, and we slapped in the rest. 

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the garden sits at about 24 feet by 16 feet. It's a decent size for us first-timers!

And raised garden beds? They're definitely high on the priority list for next year, holy crap. No question about it.

This is Wren's little bean sprout she started from preschool. I thought it had died and forgot about it and one day we gasped in amazement, it lived! Her first plant. So cute.

I'm happy to say that I enjoy gardening and trying to find my "green thumb" within. Although if my sister saw how I transferred plants into pots and in the garden she'd probably be mortified. But hey, I'm coming along! (And thank goodness I have a million family members to go to with questions.)

As the plants started to come up, I felt the excitement probably every gardener does when the garden is budding with life. I can only compare it to something like working on a knitting or sewing project. At first it doesn't look like much, and then as time goes on the project starts to unfold and take shape. I feel that same excitement as if I'm making a baby quilt or knitting a toque and it finally starts to actually look like a quilt or a toque instead of just fabric and yarn.

 It's starting to look like a real garden out there!