Starting the Clean Up

With our wedding party less than a couple of weeks away we started doing some real clean up in the backyard. This Spring the backyard was dirt and some weeds. First we put down the mulch and border along the sidewalk and we've also seeded grass a couple of time. Yesterday we cleaned up the shady corner of the yard where no grass was growing and we filled in the bare spots with some more grass seed.


Well, as you can see the corner does get some morning sun but it does not last for long. Here are the purple marconi peppers - I have yet to taste them:


My brussel sprouts:


Two different eggplants:

Consuming: The All American Way

Here is the new little patio set we got on sale at Home Depot:


You can kind of see, in the middle to the right, the 70's-esque planter stand I got at the thrift store for a few bucks. It has six round stands and is perfect for my plethora of houseplants. It helps add to the jungle feel I'm trying to get going in the back. You can see The Beast trying to eat this corner of the house, too.

Nightshades in the Morning

I used one of the banana peppers a couple weeks ago to flavor up a quinoa dish. Otherwise we haven't picked any at all - and we definitely need to start! Can you see them - over there in the back?

Look at all the little jalapeños!

This is Schuster our foster dog, he wants to go for a walk. How do I know? Because he always wants to go for a walk.

This bed works great for the eggplants because, as you can see, they are growing big and healthy.

Eggplants are one of my favorite vegetables to grow because their color is so amazing...and they are so shiny! I count four baby eggplants in this shot-

But here is the real baby, Robbie!

This beast is threatening to eat our house...

It's Outgrowing Itself!

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted...and my garden is HUGE! Here's a picture from around two weeks ago:

Now here are a couple different angles from this morning:


You can see that I went way overboard with the kale. Every week I have been picking bunches and giving them away to the neighbors and co-workers and I still have more than our little family could ever eat. And if you look in the back right you will see my cucurbits going absolutely insane. They need more room!


The picture above is from the backside of the garden where the squash and zucchini are taking over. Below is what I found when I went in there to try and train some of the vines to come outside the fence instead of choking out the rest of my plants...


...they ended up on the grill just an hour later - with just a little extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and sliced garlic, delicious! Below is our back garden and, yes I know, it is very weedy. It is next to impossible to keep it weed-free so I've been doing some drive-by weeding to make sure no plants are in danger of succumbing to them. Most of our corn was knee-high by Fourth of July, so we must be doing something right. The mammoth sunflowers are indeed mammoth.