Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

...how does your garden grow? Well, there are no silver bells or cockleshells in my garden! If you will remember, we attempted to have a garden last year, but the torrential rains and wicked weather pretty much destroyed what we began. I also think that we just got ahead of ourselves and started way too early. This year, somewhat at the last minute, we decided to try again. We waited until the last week of April to get started. Our first step was to burn the yard waste that was piled up on the garden plot from last year. We had a load of dirt brought in, and mixed the ashes and dirt all up! I had planted cucumber, squash, zucchini, watermelon, and cantaloupe seeds in pots to get them going before putting them in the ground.

Unfortunately, I forgot to label the pots.

When it was time to put the seedlings in the ground, they looked pretty pitiful! We worked our butts off for a weekend full of digging, tilling, weeding, and raking dirt into rows. Unfortunately, the plot appearance didn't show much for a few weeks. Here is what we started with...

And after two weeks of watering and weeding...

Then six weeks in, it has grown so much, I had to use two pictures!!!

Just this week, we have started to bring in some produce each day. It isn't much, but the kids are super excited about it, and it is surprisingly a type of therapy for me to get out there every day and tend to everything. When I am not out in the garden, I am thinking of ways to make it better or do it differently next year...and most of all, how to fight squash bugs. They are relentless. We have also battled deer, raccoon, rabbits, and crows! But, we are finally starting to see a pay off ~ 

We have about 6 baby cantaloupes on the vines and two watermelons the size of peas! I love watching them grow. I have been picking a lot of cucumbers, a few squash/zucchini, a few okra, a jalepeno pepper, and best of all...