The Garden

It's the first year in our new house that needs all sorts of work.  We started out wanting to be sane and reasonable. We would be doing a lot of house projects. It would be hectic. 

(I was pretty impressed that Abram agreed. He tends to be a bit less reasonable and a bit more wildly idealistic and ambitious, which usually turns out to be a blessing...)

We started with two raised beds and a sunny section alongside the garage. After spending the morning tearing up the sod, Abram came back that evening and realized that instead of two raised beds, we could have oriented them horizontally and gotten in 5. “Oh well,” I thought. “We can do it all differently next year.”

Then Abram talked to a parent at the school who’d had someone come till his yard with a tractor.
Then he found the craigslist ad. 

Then I said, “We might as well go the length of the backyard if he’s coming out.” 

So, here we are with 1200 feet of garden space. I was nervous going into it, but as soon as it was tilled and we began arranging beds that afternoon (and Abram actually agreed that we could do organic shapes and not just highly efficient rectangles!), suddenly I was just giddy with the possibility of what we had just taken on.  I could barely keep my mouth shut about it!

 Not the best picture, but you can see where it was heading a few weeks ago...  The squashes are rocking their whole section and filling in all the paths. The sunflowers are nearly as tall as Aurora now and I can't wait for the beans to climb to the top of the teepee. 

 I have to admit that I am so happy when I see the girls snacking on goodies from the garden. Even if they don't finish it (usually the case with beets), we cook it up for dinner and they're so much more interested in eating things they've watered and picked themselves. 

In the words of the Jack Johnson playing right now, 

"This is how it's supposed to be" !!

The garden is lush with goodness: chard, kale, lettuces, zucchini, beets, leeks, green onions, carrots, herbs. We are really enjoying it.

The winter gardening edition of the seed catalogue showed up at the school a few weeks ago and Abram came home with another wild notion.....

Yep, we’ve probably got another 8-900 feet tilled. I was not so convinced with one section, I admit it. I’m still a bit concerned about tying it in with the rest of the yard. And yet, as we were pulling up carrots for the girls to snack on and Abram was reminding me of the gloriousness of the garden, I thought, “Hmm, we could actually plant enough carrots to feed these girls through the winter.” 

I guess less lawn and awkward landscaping could work out alright this year.  ;)