Summer Bounty

Kevin's the gardener in the family. I wont even pretend that I've got a green bone in my body. I have trouble keeping any plant alive. Although I have been known to grow a mean weed (that's the "pest" kind... not the DEA-knock-down-your-door kind, mind you).

Anyway, last year was our first year at the garden and while I helped out more then, I was really just the cheerleader. I mean... how much help can a fully pregnant woman really be in the whole gardening arena? I can imagine if we lived in the plains in the old days being pregnant wouldn't have gotten me out of much. Oh well... thank the LORD for modernization (and air conditioning)!

We made some mistakes last year (i.e. planting too early and getting hit by a couple frosts) and suffered garden envy as our neighbor across the street would constantly yield exponentially more tomatoes and cucumbers than we ever did. Yet we decided to try again.

Well, to be exact I decided to WATCH THE KIDS while Kevin did the gardening, but that's beside the point. Come on, you can't really have a 1 year old crawling around in the dirt with the bugs and pesticides now can you? What did those frontier women do in the good ole' days? Strap the kid to their back? With no sunscreen? And bugs? And that whole natural childbirth thing? With the doctor in the next town and maternal death rates what they were? Let's just say God knew what He was doing when he chose for me to be born with all of the comforts of microwave ovens, the internet, a grocery store 5 minutes down the road and Kotex.

Because you dont even want to THINK about THAT aspect of life as a woman on the frontier. YUCK!

Anyway, I digress. We got back from the beach on Sunday and Kevin's vegetable garden was busting with growth. We had gotten so much rain while we were gone (a blessing as everything was pretty brown) that the zucchini and the melons literally took off!

Natalie had a good time helping pick all of the ripe produce and did a better job than last year at refraining from plucking the green tomatoes from their place on the vine. (Last year you might have thought she was color blind!)

We were hoping that by picking things like eggplant and zucchini and fresh green beans she'd be more likely to eat them. Alas, that has not yet proved to be true, but we'll keep trying.

The broccoli was a hit though. It was more on par with broccolini (if you've ever seen that). A bit smaller than regular broccoli and every bit as tasty (especially smothered in cheese). Okay, you could probably smother an old tire in cheese and it would taste good, but that's not the point.


This is the picture of the harvest we brought in. It's exciting as it's the first major harvest this year. Our tomatoes are still pretty green as we planted kinda late this year (perhaps we were gun shy after last year). But if you look at the garden now, you can tell that there's going to be lots to come. Hooray!

Of course the neighbor across the street STILL has better looking plants and we're envisioning some sort of National Lampoon style sabotage going on. If you come over to our house and notice the motion detecting camera set up on the garden, you'll know what's up!