The one where she bored everyone to death with millions of pictures

"So...where do we go from here?"

Tonight, after it had rained for most of the day, I went out to the garden to see how things were doing. I was in heaven. 

Swiss chard, onions and peppers

My garden is flourishing!

Swiss Chard

I've spent many hours dreaming it up, creating the design, planning plant placement, building the actual garden, planting everything and tending to these plants. When I walk back there and see things thriving, I can't even explain how good that feels.

It really is one of my favorite places to be. Sometimes I just sit and stare, amazed. To me, it's just beautiful.

I think the combination of Opal Basil and the fine textured carrot foliage would be a gorgeous addition to a flower bed.

I've never really had much luck with peppers, but they are all growing well and I'm starting to see little peppers on them.

I have several different kinds of tomatoes and the mesh trellis supports have been great so far. I'm starting to see little tomatoes on a lot of them!

Never mind the toys, gotta keep the four year old entertained sometimes!

I have three different types of peas on the left side of the supports and three different types of cucumbers to the right. I had spinach in front of the peas but it started bolting so I pulled them out. I will probably either replant spinach or a different type of salad greens there. In front of the cucumbers I have baby romaine.

aww aren't they cute?

Do you by any chance remember that middle bed I wanted to have jack be little pumpkins and morning glories climbing up a teepee?

Okay so I obviously planted too much in this bed but I might be okay with that. They are climbing up the teepee and spilling over the edges. I love it! So far the morning glories are still trying to climb up through the pumpkins. Hopefully they'll be able to sneak through so there will be some blue blooms mixed in here and there. I think that would be so pretty with the pumpkin flowers!

These are boy flowers. You can tell because they don't have little baby pumpkin bumps.
They get to stay thin. Jerks...

Speaking of flowers...have you ever seen a potato flower? Well I haven't, at least not until today!

Okay so I know it's closed and sad looking, but I was pretty excited to see that this evening! I have never grown potatoes before so I didn't know what to expect. When I filled the bed they are in, I only filled it halfway to "make it easier for me to hill up"...right...

I've obviously underestimated these guys. Four and a half bales of straw have gone into this potato bed.

"Is that all you've got lady?"

...and they keep growing...and growing...and growing! Now I know that some of it is just the straw settling but wow! I am going to have to add some chicken wire around this bed to keep the straw from spilling out. I still think about how much it would suck if I were to dig down after all of this and not find any potatoes! I'm pretty sure I would cry. Yes. I would definitely cry. Hopefully, we will have lots of potatoes!

"Hey guys, how's it going?"

So, things are growing pretty well, besides the weeds we also have a few uninvited guests like this tomato plant that randomly sprouted here!

"oh come on I'm a pretty fun guy!"

"'fun guy?' For shame Jess, for shame""

...and these little guys that showed up in the bed with the peppers and onions! I'm thinking I'm going to have to take the straw mulch out of this bed. With a soil mixture of composted manure, peat moss and vermiculite I think it might be retaining more than enough moisture without the mulch. So far this summer I think I have had to water the garden maybe three times! 

So, that's where we're at right now. If you've made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to look at all of these pictures! Next time I will try to remember to take my real camera out with me so you don't have to look at camera phone pictures!