Farming -My New Talent (of sorts)

The old garden here is still chugging along -and amazing me, to no end, in the process!

The lettuce has been fantastic and we have been using it as often as possible in salads and also, for some really tasty garnish with burgers and other sandwiches. Just adds such a nice crisp tastiness there, ya know!
Here's a shot of the whole garden. Remember now, the plot for these veggies is smallish -like about 8x8 foot square, if that, so everything is growing, pretty much each veggies on top of the other. Considering that factor is yet another thing that totally surprises me as to how good this thing is doing under my normally black thumb!









Now, here's two shots of the garden -from left to right. The picture on the left here shows the lettuce, one of the two tomato plants (sandwiched in between the carrots and peas on this end) and at the opposite end is another tomato plant, which actually has 2 or 3 tomatoes forming on it plus several more blossoms too. The tomato plant on this end was put in much later than the first one, so is a "slow starter" and as yet, has no blossoms on it. But hopefully you can see all the blossoms on the peas and I even plucked some peas tonight that I am going to use in some oriental dish this week -like one that calls for "Snow peas in the pods" as they should be fine for something like that. I hope so anyway.

The picture on the left shows the two rows of bush beans, then the cucumbers which are flanked then by the corn! Boy, are those cucumber plants huge! I spotted several blossoms on the cucumbers the other day and the beans have blossoms galore all over 'em! Yippy skippy!

The success of the garden thus far though has inspired Bill and he has promised that come fall, he will build on to this garden enclosure -A LOT -he says, so that next year I can plant more stuff and hopefully, will have enough room to plan for some open space between each item planted too to facilitate weeding and picking too! I wonder, considering how closely these things are planted to each other, can beets/carrots/peas/beans/cucumbers and corn cross-polinate each other? Wouldn't that be something though it they could and would do that? Wonder what one would call veggies of that type anyway?

Today just happens to be the birthday for my ex-husband so Mandy got a couple cards, had Maya sign one of 'em, and she mailed the to "Poppy" yesterday. Okay, so she's a tad late in the mailing there but heck, it's the thought that counts isn't it?

Today is also Mandy's good friend, Jen-Jen's birthday too so Mandy baked two pineapple upside down cakes (9x9 inch square) -one for us and the other, that she took up to Jen-Jen for her birthday. But before she got around to taking the one cake, while I was starting supper, I had company in the kitchen who decided to ignore Gram's instructions to NOT TOUCH anything -primarily the cakes, ya know.

This is how the pineapple-upside down cake that was to be for us looks right now! Can you tell Maya likes the cake part but has no time for the pineapple?

Needless to say, Mandy wasn't overly impressed with Maya's nibbling around the cake there so when she left to take the other cake up to Jen-Jen's house, Kurtis was the favored child who got to go along for the ride and Maya got left behind.

And yes, that brought on much wailing and gnashing of teeth and well, a few tears and lots and lots of screaming! Yeah, a full-blown meltdown!

Maybe one of these days it will register that there are consequences that happen when one does not listen to what Grammy tell her to do. I'm hoping that will take place sooner rather than later too!

And that's all the excitement here in this household for today anyway. Now, time for me to get back to my sauce I'm making to go with some kind of pasta -rigatoni or ziti maybe -with some mozzarella cheese sprinkled over it and then baked for a bit -along with the cheese-garlic breadsticks Mandy is getting ready to put in the oven now. Oh, and served with a nice, fresh salad too!

Love that garden and what it's yielding. Too bad we can have a pineapple tree in the back yard too though!