Backyard Garden

The garden is doing well. We've been eating the salad greens and many of the herbs. The oregano and the sage came back from last year. The sage is just about flowering, so that's good for the bees. The Chives came back, and we finally gave them a permanent place in the herb garden. Jen's parents brought some rhubarb from their garden up in Sumner. We planted that in between the Pear and the Japanese maple. Next summer we should have our own. We have one row that we have not planted anything in yet. Likely we will use it to rotate out some greens. The rest of the garden is dotted with plants and flowers. At least it will be dotted with plants and flowers as soon as they grow. Now the battle for the garden begins. We had turned up out lawn, and this is our first year with the new garden, so the grass is coming back. It seems to like the new soil as much as we hoped our garden plants would. Along with the grass and weeds, we have a number of volunteers from where we added ...

The lovely tea roses at the top of the garden...                                                 Scarlet runner beans and purple basil mulched... potatoes that need mulch and to be weeded still... mulched rows with cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber, swiss chard, beets, carrots, onions, nore basil... Tomatoes! Nepal, Itailian paste tomatoes, and brandywines... Another shot of the mulched rows. We are using newspapers and dirty hay from the sheep infused with tiny little dry poops. Makes great mulch and fertilizer. Hopefully it helps keep the weeding and watering time down!