Late bloomer

Can you see her?  Isn't she cute?  This is our first little crop.  Our little baby tomato.  Elizabeth loves to sing to it and talk in baby voices to it.  We were late getting our plants in the ground due to the move, but they are taking to this dirt like they love it.  Mom helped me lay them out and plan their spacing (I've never done this before...can you tell?).  The girls are both good "helpers" in watering the plants and playing in the water hose and keeping an eye out for dog poop.  

Here's another angle.  They left these raised beds in the yard...can you believe how lucky we were??  Tonya gave me a tutorial in staking, which I still need to do with a couple of these fellas.  But mom had brought the cages with her on her last visit so we decided to go ahead and use them.

We have tomatoes in the back and jalapenos in the front and marigolds to the side...because my grandma said they attract bugs and will keep them away from the veggies.

The other bed (from L to R) is a salad mix (which always makes me laugh thinking of Donna's adventures with lettuce and bugs), green peppers and basil.  I'm wondering if I need to stake the green peppers or if they'll just be fine on their own?  What do you think?

Here is the blueberry patch.  I'm not so sure I've done justice to this one, as it bloomed and produced fruit but they didn't get real big or colored...not that I was really sure what to look for but they just didn't look ready for muffins.  So, I'll just keep my eyes on these guys. 

Ah...summer...I love it!  Well, and Fridays too!  Have a great weekend!

Raspberries and my sad attempt at gardening

One of the best things about this rental house is the raised bed in the back with its unruly raspberry patch.  Last year, I made the mistake of thinking I could manage the entire thing being planted, only to discover that I am not Old McDonald nor the Farmer in the Dell...  My biggest problem was that I didn't weed it early because I wasn't sure if weeds or sprouts were popping up and very quickly, it over-ran me.  

Well, that, and I had a newborn.

Ah, there's our pride and joy.

And because it's a rental house, and we've owned a house before, we really don't have much inspiration to do more than the bare minimum to the property.  So we keep the grass trimmed and Scott manages the bushes.  But those raspberry bushes are BORN FREE!!  

So I've kept my eye on them from the kitchen window and ventured out today to pick in the land of dog poop, mosquito's and mud.  (Notice the nice, dog mud path created in front of the cinder blocks??)

Now, last year, I was worried about the birds getting to the berries before I could - so I used netting and realized what a pain in the rear end it is to pick through little netting holes.  So we didn't mess with it this year and our birds haven't touched them...weirdos...

Look here!  Free berries!!  (Free for us because we didn't pay for these plants...and it's not like we've used any pesticides or fertilizer.)  This is about a cup and they're really small, but are so sweet when they get dark.  It'll take me about a week to get them all, but every day, I'll be able to pick about this amount. 

I rinse them, plate them and stick them in the freezer.  After a couple hours, I'll put them in a baggie.  Now, I've been told not to rinse them before hand because it makes them mushy, but I caught Butch cocking his leg in the general vicinity of the bushes, so I thought I would play it safe.

Ah, there's Mr. Wonderful himself. 

I'm unhealthily craving a mixed berry pie in my future...or a raspberry/green tea shake I saw recently.  The house we're moving into has blueberry plants already and I'm really counting my chickens that they wait to ripen until after we move in.

The rest of my gardening?

Eat your heart out, baby.  We have green peppers, salad mix, tomatoes and jalapenos.  I have no idea which is which except for the salad mix that has flowers growing out of it.  Is salad supposed to have flowers??!!

Ok, my friends...back to packing!