The Garden

Can you believe it is September already? I feel like I have been robbed of half of my summer because I have been in baby land for the past two months. I can't complain too much about the passage of time though because it is my favorite season--harvest time!  I grew up working in my parents extremely large garden and somehow managed to still love gardening. One reason that we moved to the apartment that we did was that there were available garden plots. Little did we know how much work it would be to get the ground ready. Several days of sifting through the 'soil' and digging up rocks the size of footballs.

 

Eventually we got the ground all ready and started planting. Unfortunately, we had a hard time with it last year because bugs kept eating all of the little sprouts that came up. In the end we got rid of them with heavy use of pesticide. Let's just say that our garden was hardly 'organic.' 

Anyway, we weren't thrilled with our garden last year, but we learned a few lessons and have enjoyed it a lot more this year. Here I am with what we joke about as our third child.  We have cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini as our main crops. There are also chives, green onions, carrots, green beans, lettuce, and basil. It's a little crowded--especially in the tomato forest on the left.

We are a little crowded in our allotted plot, so we are taking full advantage of the unused plots next to ours. We had an extra zucchini sprout that we transplanted--do you think management can tell it just isn't a weed growing? :) We also have the cucumbers growing over the side.











One thing I have been super excited about this year is the fresh basil that I actually got to grow. Last year I tried and tried and babied it and babied it, which result it nothing--one small sprout that died. Obviously you can see that we still have some issues with bugs getting it, but the main issue we have dealt with this year is cats wanting to use our square foot garden as their litter box. We bought some cat and dog repellant, which may or may not have done anything. Eventually we just covered the whole thing with a net, which I guess broke them of the habit of using it. This was a good thing because I am not too much of an animal person anyway, and my blood boiled when I saw all of my dug up plants.

 

 Here are a couple of pictures of my real children. Children! Still not used to that. M has been smiling a lot recently. I love it when I look down and she is just staring at me and gives me a big grin like she has been waiting to catch my eye.

Ellie looks so much older to me these past weeks. She is a great big sister and is doing well despite displaying a little more attitude than she used to.

Here are my two girls 'playing' together on the floor. I love them both so much!