The garden this year

Sorry to be gone so long from this blog, but here’s the garden for this year as of July 10, 2009. Enjoy!

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Looking back on the garden

“A garden is never so good as it will be next year.” –Thomas Cooper

Summer has come and gone. Our first attempt at organic veggie gardening went well in spite of us this year! In July, we had the most lush vegetable garden you can imagine…but life and the squash bug caught up with us [...]

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Expanding the garden subsistence style

You may have read about the problem we had with our raised beds — the mulch underneath the beds was holding water like a sponge making the beds too wet. We fixed that problem as much as we can, but decided to plant more crops around the perimeter of the garden. Then, we [...]

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Raindrops are falling…in my rain gauge

Okay, so it’s not as catchy as “raindrops are falling on my head,” but the rain gauge has become an important fixture in our garden. Last Friday, May 22, it rained 0.3″ but now it’s Tuesday and the weather is warming up. We needed another shower.
This evening Debbie and I sat in [...]

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First harvest of the season!

Today for lunch we had some fresh spinach from the garden. Not a lot, but enough to stir into the pasta sauce and ladle over our green organic spinach pasta. For dinner we harvested lettuce — 4 varieties — and 4 of our radishes transplanted weeks ago from our neighbor. Fresh radishes have an almost-peppery [...]

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Putting the plants to bed

Last Saturday, we put the plants to bed. Literally. So, here they are, three weeks ahead of what we have been told is the last frost date, May 15. We’re taking a chance, but really not so much so. Why? Because we have more plants where these came from. [...]

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A prayer for God’s garden

I imagine your world, Lord, and feel so small.
We’ve messed it up, this beautiful world…just in my lifetime.
Like greedy, unappreciative children, we’ve ransacked your gifts…taking what suits us and throwing the rest away like worthless trash.
We’ve replaced the real things of life with imitations–
plastic homes,
plastic food made of artificial ingredients in a factory far [...]

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Tending the path

Late Monday afternoon, while Chuck was filling up the bird feeders, I grabbed my trowel and walked down to our labyrinth. It sits on the far end of our backyard where it’s peaceful and quiet…well, almost. There’s one exception…or maybe hundreds…it’s those screaming wild onions dancing down our peaceful path!
I do see the irony of [...]

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First snow of the year

 View of the backyard covered with snow.
Last Thursday it snowed.  Actually, snow started falling Wednesday night after church and continued until we had a little over an inch.  Not much, but it was the first snowfall of the year, so everybody was excited.  School was cancelled, kids made small snowmen, and it was a lot [...]

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