How Does Your Garden Grow?

Sheesh! I didn't realize it had been over a week since I posted here! I must have been really, really busy -or very pre-occupied -not to have noticed such a large gap in posts.

Well, I have been a bit busy though -between the normal thing of embroidering every chance I get and things going on with the kids, plus a drive yesterday down to Pittsburgh (with Mandy, Kurtis and his TSS going along with us for the day-trip) and also, from time to time, actually doing a little work in my poor, very neglected little vegetable patch!

I also had a very nice time Monday evening too when, along with seven (I think that's how many there were) other women from our church, I went to an "indoor" picnic given by the women of the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church down in Karthaus, PA. What a nice evening that was as we all enjoyed plenty of good company and conversation along with some great food! Thanks to all the ladies of their WELCA group for a very entertaining evening!

But anyway, I don't think I've been exactly overloaded with so many things to do that I couldn't have taken a few minutes of my very valuable time to do a post and I'm sorry I've been so lax there. I know everyone who reads my blog has just been waiting and waiting, wondering where on earth I've been, why I have written nothing at all here for over a week now.

Well, this morning though, I decided I HAD to write a post after I'd gone outside in the backyard to check on my lovely little vegetable garden.

Unfortunately, what I saw there today makes my poor little garden not so very lovely today!

Here's some pictures of the stuff growing -or in some cases -trying to take hold and grow -in my little space. Theses pictures were all taken this past Monday -a mere five days ago.

To the left, you can see the top of my garden with the little row of leaf lettuce (which I really love and it's very tender and good right now), almost 3 nice rows of onions and on the far left, is a row of spinach that seems to be doing okay. In the photo to the right, there's my green beans -which are going very nicely , a short row of snow peas and then various little hills of squash that is also coming along quite well too.

Here's the lower part of my garden with another picture to the left that shows more squash plants.

The picture here on the right is where I have tomatoes and peppers -green bell peppers and jalapenos -planted but it's pretty hard to make out where they are as the plants are very small -much smaller than I would have liked them to be when transplanting them but they really needed the extra space to grow outside of the little starter box I had them in. I had started 18 little peat pots of tomatoes and roughly 40 little pots (very tiny peat pots, these were) of green bell peppers and jalapenos peppers but not very many of them actually grew to a size that I thought maybe they would take root and grow better if planted in the garden.)

But this morning, when I ventured down to the little garden, I was stunned by what I saw there!

My peppers and tomatoes are still struggling but most of them, at least, are still alive. The lettuce, onion, spinach and squash is all doing very well too. As a matter of fact, I picked a whole slew of lettuce today, washed, cleaned and patted it dry and then, put it into large zip-lock storage bags with the intent to take a couple bags of fresh leaf lettuce to church tomorrow to place on the Harvest Table there where others can take a bag or two -whatever they like -home for a free will donation to one of four various funds we're promoting people donate to. (This is a new program at our church and thus far, seems to be fairly well received thus far too. I know I really appreciated being able to pick up some freshly grown asparagus along with a couple bunches of rhubarb too a couple weeks ago there and boy, was that asparagus ever wonderful, cooked in foil on the grill! YUMMY!)

But anyway -this is what I saw when I looked over my two, formerly well-formed, lovely rows of green beans!

I looked at those green bean plants and I confess that I muttered, under my breath, WTF!

If you can click this picture and look closer at the plants, you should be able to see that the upper layer of leaves that were gracing these plants this past Monday disappeared overnight last night!

If you try really, really hard to look at these two rows, you might even be able to see a faint trace along the upper part of the picture, between the two rows of beans, the hoof prints that were there this morning that indicate at least one, probably two, doggone deer have decided to launch a dining program for themselves on my poor little green beans!

All the rest of the stuff I have planted is still growing, still seems to be thriving and also, seem to be untouched by the deer's nibblings.

But these beans -WOW! It just looks like someone came through with a set of hedge clippers and very nicely -very evenly too, I might add -snipped away at those plants.

The nerve of Bambi and his mother to do that to my garden!

I'm really gonna be rooting now, come deer season this fall, that Ken or one of the other nearby hunters here, takes those deer out of the population!

Can you believe it? This is the first time since I've been trying to grow a little victory garden of sorts that I've had any interlopers like this invade my plants! As a matter of fact, when I think back to when I was a child and my Grandpa always, ALWAYS, had a huge vegetable garden in our back fields, I don't recall ever seeing plants scavenged the ways these were!

Oh, from time to time, rabbits would come through an feast a while on Grandpa's veggies -mainly the carrot tops and they liked to dine a bit on the lettuce every now and again as well, but I don't recall ever having seen this kind of munching that apparently has taken place in my little plot!

First time for everything I suppose and this sure was a big first for me!