Gorgeous garden weekend

80 degree temps and easy, rolling sunshine combined make up Mama Nature's alarm clock to wake my little inner garden fairy. She's in there, hiding, but she's alive, excited, and well. Saturday morning I threw on my bikini, muck boots, aviators and leather work gloves to go crazy hoe-in' up my yard. I thought I was pretty well hidden from the road, but a few honks and whistles informed me that I wasn't. Men!

Planning, preparing, and maintaining a food garden basically on my own is intimidating! Trip does and is happy to help, but it is my job to plan layout, what goes in, and how to take care of it so that it yields us the stuff of life. We've got a pretty big space, about 25' by 25', and we are trying hard to use only heirloom varieties of plants. These are basically the traditional varieties that your usual hybrids consist of. Many heirlooms are just as durable, beautiful and tasty as their F1 hybrids, but they in danger of extinction because people just don't know about them. I didn't until recently. What's really sweet about heirloom varieties is that they are openly pollinated, they grow true from seed. This means they produce seeds from this season's plants, which will produce seedlings that will be just like the parent plant. Meaning: you can save seeds from your crops this year to store for next year, and not have to run to TSC to buy them. Horray!

Anyway, some of our exciting heirloom varieties include fruits and veggies such as these:

















































































Ok, I know sweet peas aren't really peas, but I couldn't resist when I saw them. They're so pretty!







Friday night Trip and I went for a walk around campus. The drill field is so pretty all lit up.



And since you haven't had a dose of Goose for a while, here she is. A whole one year old now, and still terrible!