garden update

My hands were a bit full last summer, what with Alice's arrival. We managed a little garden, but barely. Strawberries, tomatoes, a couple handfuls of sugar snap peas- was there anything else? I can't say with confidence that there was and I have no record of it. The previous year we hit a glorious gardening stride (check out these pictures!). Life ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes, fits and starts, yadda yadda, but now we're back on the bandwagon with lots of things- composting, mowing, weeding flower beds, and yes, even vegetable gardening.

An addition I'm excited about this year is using some choice plants to deter bugs from us and from our cultivated plants too. We've added lavender, mint and lemon balm to the mix and split apart our bull onions- the ever spreading, hearty as heck bull onions- and spread them around the perimeter of both garden beds. Slugs go crazy for our strawberries, so I'm also hoping to run copper wire around the strawberry bed to tell them who's boss.

To go along with our perennial strawberries, asparagus, and hops, we've planted three kinds of tomatoes, four kinds of peppers, arugula, lettuce, sugar snap peas, two kinds of cucumbers, zucchini, and radishes galore. I love dirty gardening hands almost as much as I love crunching into my own, backyard grown veggies. I love the hope of planting and waiting- letting those precious little seeds go dark and quiet and then seeing them courageously burst out, faces shining in the sun.

Too much? Too dramatic? I don't care. I'm really glad to be gardening again.

Radish seedlings:

Hops, hops, hops- we need to split and spread these rhizomes:

Grow little sugar snap, grow: