Our wonderful garden…

Posted by Matthew on Sep 13, 2008 in Blog, Garden, Home | 5 comments

So, somehow we made it an entire summer without doing a post dedicated to our amazing garden.  Every year we plant our garden on Mother’s Day weekend, and spend the rest of the season maintaining and enjoying everything it has to offer.  Our summer was mixed up this year due to a number of circumstances, yet our garden ended up being one of our best yet.  We planted our typical crop of tomatoes, squash, zucchini and peppers – and they all did great.  Also this year we finally saw our raspberry bush reach it’s full potential.  Over the past couple of weeks we have been picking almost a bowl of berries each night.  It has quickly become THE highlight of our garden.

Everything else did great this year…we have enjoyed fresh tomatoes on a daily basis and our squash, lettuce, zucchini crop has been unreal.  In particular…I have LOVED the fresh garden salsa Jen makes each week!!  Also, Cameron’s sunflower patch really took off this year and we were able to grow a half dozen giant sunflower plants (pictured after the heads were chopped).  We look forward to making sunflower seeds along with our zucchini bread and raspberry pie.

Our pumpkin patch is doing great – even if it’s stubborn, and insists on growing in our neighbor’s yard!  For some reason, no matter how much we attempt to keep the plants on our side of the fence, they end up shooting through and sprouting a pumpkin.  In fact, our biggest pumpkin (approx. 18″ diameter) is growing proudly on the other side of the fence!  We are lucky enough to have a number of good lookin’ pumpkins – both pie and jack-o-lantern – in our patch, and we cannot wait to pick ‘em and carve ‘em up!!

Lastly, I have kept our big summer project a secret from most of you, but we are in the process of re-doing our backyard!  In an effort to maximize our grass, as well as add trees and additional landscaping, we have removed the play area from the South end of our yard.  I transplanted grass from other areas of the yard and was lucky enough to have the grass survive, so it’s almost impossible to tell we had a playground in the corner.  Consider these pics a sneak peek – and in the coming weeks I will post the entire ‘before and after’ series that will include trees, etc.  But as you can see, the difference is already impressive (and we love it!).  Having the extra grass is amazing and we cannot wait until the entire project is complete!

Before: After:

We hope everyone had a great summer, and our settling back into the groove of school, etc.
Take care,
MJCE&CJ