It's silly, how proud I am when I get to harvest a vegetable I've grown in my garden. I'd be a terribly arrogant farmer. With acres and acres of crops, my pride would really get out of hand.

Being able to cut up a cucumber that tastes so delicious and put it into some dressing for lunch the next day. The taste of a tomato fresh from the garden cannot be compared to anything you can get in the store.

I enjoying weeding, watering, checking it for signs of problems.

It is small, our garden. The amount of happiness it brings us through the summer is well worth the work.

 We've got squash, tomatoes, basil, jalapenos and cucumbers. We've also started a strawberry patch (fingers crossed) that we'll be able to harvest in two years.

 Bee and her grandmother outfitted her fairy garden, which turned out to be such fun. We water those happy plants too and make sure that everything stays in good shape.

It really is one of the best parts of summer. I love my garden.

CARROTS

We decided on Monday to dig up the remainder of carrots in our garden. Bee is always wanting "Bugs Bunny" carrots, so we left a few to see if they would get nice and big for her to chomp on.

It worked! How fun to dig up a huge batch of fresh veggies in winter. Luckily, the weather has been so nice, we didn't have to dig through snow and ice to get to them.

Now I've got a big batch of carrots in the fridge, minus the ones the kids ate, and am pondering carrot soup. I've never made it before, but this batch is just begging to be cooked up into a nice big pot of soup.

Does anyone else get that song stuck in their heads when I type that?!

           Carrot stew, carrot stew! It's our favorite thing to do.
           Get a pot and a carrot to two, and cook up a carrot stew.
           Nothing makes our tummies so full and keeps us happy too.

I had an orange Disney tape when I was a child and this song was one of my favorites.

I may just make the soup so that I can sing the song all day. 

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January 5th, 2012: We had this carrot soup last night and it was delicious. I chose ginger for my spice, but then ended up adding some thyme because I'm impulsive like that. I went the heavy cream route for my first try, knowing that would make any soup tasty. I like that you could make a different variation each time. It was not hard to make and I love any excuse to use my newly purchased immersion blender. That's just good fun.

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Happy soup

The chili that I made this weekend was a little odd, made from random ingredients I already had. V8 instead of tomato juice, navy beans instead of chili beans, corn (?) for no reason other than I thought it sounded good.

What made the chili special were the tomatoes. The last from my garden. Beautiful red tomatoes, my last harvest. Diced and sauteed with onions and garlic.

There are some delicious left overs are in the fridge and waiting for my lunch today. Now that is a reason to be happy.

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A Peek Outside

Early in spring, I planted some herbs and watched them sprout by my kitchen sink. Teensy seedlings, I wondered if I'd ever really see them to harvest. I was not confident. The good thing is that by doing it this way, the kids were able to help out with planting and enjoy watching the growth. We've actually got one little patch of chives that have made it...and...

Real, live basil. Growing outside in my garden. I did that!



The rabbits may have eaten my peas and lettuce (you are welcome, rabbits). But my tomatoes, radishes, and carrots are looking promising! The tomatoes I bought as actual plants, but the radishes and carrots are seeds that the kids planted. (Gardening 101, I know, but we are rocking it!). I've managed to weed these small garden beds and keep them watered. We will have tomatoes very soon!

If you look a little closer...looky there! Green tomatoes, soon to be salsa and tomato sauce and also eaten like an apple.
Yummmmmmm.

I'm 0 for 3 on gardening experiences in the past ten years. This is the closest I've come to actual success. I read that basil is great to plant by tomatoes, so that's what we've done. Now if I can stick with it in coming weeks, and not let my attention span get me yet again. We may have actual veggies to eat from our yard!

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Peonies

pe·o·ny  [pee-uh-nee] –noun, plural -nies.

any of various plants or shrubs of the genus Paeonia, having large, showy flowers, as the widely cultivated species P. lactiflora: the state flower of Indiana.

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Peonies are one of my favorite flowers. Growing up, we had lots of them all over the acres we lived on (and where my parents still live). They make me feel nostalgic and happy and hopeful. That's a lot to ask for in a flower!

Imagine my joy when I found a long row of them on the south side of the house we purchased last summer. I've had such a good time watching them grow this spring. Now that they are blooming, I just like to sit out there and look at them. The smell is so flowery, the blooms so pretty.

It's one of my favorite parts of our yard.

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May Flowers

March rolled around and we had a few beautiful days. I got SO excited, we cleared flower beds, prepared soil, got everything ready so that we could plant. I took pictures of the buds on trees and coming out of the ground. I watched things sprouting up, wondering what our yard would look like in the spring. There's something so fun about your first spring in a new house. We had no idea how many plants the previous owners had and we have a ton of landscaping around our yard.

 I watched and I waited. Waited. And waited.

April was COLD. And rainy. Dreary. Cloudy. Snowy.

Where was spring?

FINALLY, this past week, it warmed up. We planted lettuce and carrot seeds in our future veggie garden . We mulched elsewhere and put in some perennials.

I'm happier here than I've ever been. I love being outside and enjoy gardening. I'm weeding, I'm planting...I'm playing in the dirt. It's so great! For the first time in a few years, I put in the effort to get some annuals and enjoy their color, even if it's just for this year.

So this summer there will hopefully be lots of fresh veggies, flowers to arrange and put inside. Butterflies visiting. And birds singing.

Yesterday M and I watched a bright red male bird singing a song that soon attracted a dull colored female. We watched her come to visit and then fly away. We laughed when he quickly followed. "Wait!" We imagined him saying, "Wait for me!". It was one of our favorite episodes of Life, come to life in our own yard.

Spring has sprung and it was so worth the wait!

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In the Planning Phase

This week I'm dreaming of spring. Join the club, right?

We've got some garden space in a corner of our yard. It's sunny, spacious, and just outside the back door to our garage. There are some actual garden boxes, which were not planted last year. We have no idea what was in them previously.

I'm picturing herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots. There will be planting and mulching and weeding.

I'd love to get my kids involved, I think it would be a great way to get these town-living kids a bit more time outside.

Previous attempts at gardening on my part have been completely unsuccessful. Picture lots of weeds and ginormous, mutant zucchini squash.

My B is seven now, turning eight this summer. It's time I started taking more time to teach her the important skills of cooking, and the work that goes into bringing food into our home and to the table. Her brother starts kindergarten in August, I need to recognize that there are things he can be helpful with also.

I'm the stereotypical mom who is forever shooing the kids out of the kitchen. Cooking is my *me* time and it's time I got over that.

So I've got two goals for myself:
*putting my kids to work in the kitchen (prep and clean up)
*a small, successful herb/vegetable patch this summer

Dreaming of such things helps me get through this time of winter, when the sparkly snow is still beautiful, but we are all growing weary of the cold.
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