Friday, July 1, 2011

I Love My Garden

I looked in the garden and what did I see?
A couple tiny ears of corn looking at me!!!
It was pretty exciting to be out watering the garden and finding some actual corn!!!  The stalks have been growing nicely and I was so excited to see the tops get the floofy stuff (as I call it) on top.  I felt like it was a sign of success that the corn was maturing so nicely.   But man!  I was super excited when I saw actual corn coming on.

I've been spending a lot of time in my garden lately.  I wonder sometimes if Colby ever wants to tear it out because it takes so much of my time.  I'm not kidding though, it takes a lot of time, but I can't help but smile when I'm out there.  My garden just makes me happy.  I honestly felt like a rock star when I was able to harvest radishes a bit ago.  I really didn't give myself much credit when I started out.  I thought everything would struggle and eventually die and it would be something I could say I tried.  But, like I said, the radishes were a success and then we had spinach and now corn.  The carrots kinda struggled at first and I almost just pulled them out when I put in tomatoes because within days of planting the seed we got a freak snow storm that washed all my carrot seeds into little clumps in strange places throughout the garden.  Grandma Tom convinced me to let them be and now they're coming along nicely as well.  I did have another little mishap with the first tomatoes I planted.  Grandma Tom gave me 30 tomato plants she had started in her green house but they all died!  I guess one hung on, so I had a 3% success rate.  I was hesitant to try any more tomatoes, but Perry brought me two yellow pear tomato plants so I had to put those in and Grandma and Grandpa Tom came and coached me through planting another two dozen plants.  I am happy to report that so far I have only lost a couple of those and we have hope that we can share tomatoes with anyone that dares ask us for some.  I'm really looking forward to canning a bunch for my home made salsa.  That seriously takes my really yummy salsa from amazing to to die for!  Now I've even got some eggplant, peppers, squash, watermelon and an artichoke plant going.  Marshall and I were marveling at the teeny, tiny watermelon that have just started coming on.  It honestly is just so fun!  It was cute the other day when Marshall was helping me spot new corn and he said, "the food in our garden will make it so we don't have to buy it at the store."  That's right, buddy.  We won't have to buy it at the store.  As long as I keep watering it and the bugs don't take over.

Which reminds me, that was one thing that took a little joy out of the gardening experience.  You might remember last year when I annihilated the squash bugs, well I found a colony of earwigs just outside the garden a couple weeks ago and I was guilty of a mass execution.  I smashed as many as I could with a near by shovel.  I spent a good five to ten minutes just standing at the top of the cement and stopping them from escaping.  That is probably the only drawback to my garden.  That, and the fact that tending it has taken any of the spare time I've had during the month of June.  No joke!  Between wedding photographer, swim lesson instructor, YW leader at Girls' Camp, gardener, housekeeper, wife and mommy the job of housekeeper has  earned emeritus status and some of the others have a "hardly productive" classification.  But I love what I'm doing and am looking forward to this month of July.  It should be a bit more relaxed.

No comments:

Post a Comment