Me Be VeG

Archive for the ‘garden’ Category

The weather has warmed, the ground thawed, the last of the snow fallen (we hope!) and my mind has been steadily focused on my garden this year. It started with garlic and winter onions and strawberries (that went in last fall and started popping out of the ground as soon as the snow melted) and has progressed into, well, the usual.

I buy plants/seeds/dirt/pots and just have a go of it. I don’t really plan much beyond I want to keep in the garden and will do anything to make that happen. This year a maaaay have gone a bit overboard with the plants, but seriously, it was for a good cause: my happiness.

My papa isn’t much help to stop me as he is feeding my gardening addiction with more raspberry plants, strawberry plants, asparagus, blackberries, grapes, gooseberries, black raspberries, and a bunch of unidentified seeds that were tossed in the mix. He’s also building me a grape trellis this year, so I’ll be making my own wine in no time! In all honesty, though, I love my papa and can’t wait to share the fruits of our shared labor with him. Lots of yummy jams, soups and maybe some fruit leather is in his future!

I haven’t taken any photos yet. I know, I know. It’s just that most of the last 2 weeks, my hands have been covered with black dirt. Even after multiple showers, I can’t get the dirt out from under my nails. I think I’ve just resigned myself to dirty fingernails until fall, which is fine by me since then I have a good reason to stop biting my nails… EWW! Ok, so back to these photos. I will take some when the rain lets up. I planted all day today, and was soaked straight through to my skivvies. (Yeah, don’t think about that one too long… trust me.)

The best part? This year I’ve taken a MUCH greater liking to flowers. Ok, let’s be honest, I went a little flower-crazy! They were all just so pretty, and there’s nothing like waking up early to water the flowers and plants and watch them perk up, ready for a day in the sun. My bungalow has become a planting extravaganza, and I couldn’t be happier.

Now, off to take another shower and hope clean skin is under there somewhere. I guess there is just something about really digging in the dirt and mud that makes this girl giddy with anticipation… for sprouts, for plants, for life, for hope.

Yes, I’m a gardener now. The woman who always HATED the outdoors and bugs and gardens and the sun. I now have a tan, tolerate the bugs, and have a full-fledged flourishing garden I can call my own. And… I love it. LOVE IT! I love to go out in the garden and just walk through it, looking at how the plants are growing, little peppers turn into huge peppers. Teeny tiny tomatoes become huge red tomatoes (if I can get to them before the birds or whatever it is that likes to take bites out of my tomatoes!).

For all those people who say this has been a terrible growing season, I have to disagree. Here’s two separate pickings from last week alone!

I’ve been busy chopping and blanching and freezing and cooking and eating all the wonderful bounty I’ve gotten from my first garden. I think I’m hooked.

Yeah, I said carrots. I was picking the veggies that needed to be picked from the garden… tomatoes, various peppers…

and noticed one carrot popping out of the ground. Just one, I swear I saw only one. That’s what started it, the frenzy of what was to become my carrot picking/digging/thinning of the afternoon.

(on this one, there is a TON of carrots hiding in the pile)

I don’t know how many there were, but I’m staring at the two (heavy) bowls… (Doc was trying to swipe a few)

AND this is MAYBE a quarter of what’s left. Needless to say I’ll have to find some recipes with carrots, lots and lots of carrots. (I don’t even like carrots that much… what was I thinking?)

Mmmmm maybe carrot cake, I like carrot cake…