Fresh from the garden

So yesterday I mentioned that I am thankful for many things. One of those being my garden. This is the first year that I have had a real, honest to goodness garden. All of my gardening years have previously focused on flowers and the odd tomato, pepper, and asparagus plants. This year we saved up to put in a 30'x14' retaining wall behind our garage and put in our garden. The kids and I were super excited to get it planted and then we had to wait. We planted corn, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, strawberries, sugar snap peas, yellow squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, and watermelon. It's been overly rainy this year, so the tomatoes haven't been so good, nor the corn, but we are managing to get a modest harvest. What fun the girls have had searching for the peas and squash hiding among the vines!

I've been really happy with what we've grown so far. It's a great feeling to know that we can feed ourselves. I'm already drooling over seed catalogs for next season. I can't wait to try some new plants and rearrange the garden, now that I know how the sun hits each spot and for how long. We're looking forward to the strawberries producing too, as well as the new blueberry and raspberry bushes we planted this spring. Each day brings something new.