How does your garden grow?

Pretty slowly for me, right now! I can't wait until it is warm enough here to plant everything out. SO far I have planted sugar peas and spinach, chard - which did not come up, and lettuce, which came up very slowly, and I have now reseeded with different seeds. The reason the lettuce and chard didn't come up, in my opinion, is that I was using seeds from last year (and the year before that) to use them up. Obviously not a great plan. Then I got some seed potatoes and onion sets from a friend (sharing seeds and starters is a great idea) and they are all out now too.

I have chives, oregano, and sage plants going strong. There is some garlic coming up, but I haven't looked to see what the bulbs look like. Maybe I'll actually be able to harvest some this year? I have a few cilantro and nasturtium seedlings reseeded from last year, too. These are all from two years ago, and since I turned the garden over really well this year, there aren't as many as I would like, so I will buy some more seeds of both of those. The kids sprinkled the garden with marigold seeds (harvested last year by the kids), and we put carrot seeds in between my rows of peas. I have started some zucchini, gourds, and cucumbers inside to put out in a week or two. We also have a bunch of seed packets obtained over the past few years of random annuals and wildflowers, that will go into my lower two "terraces". The bottom one still needs walls to hold all the soil in. This spring I split up my second terrace into an upper and lower area, because the slope was too much, and added new soil and compost to the lower part. It looks much better and should be more productive this way. This is where the potatoes went and where the cucurbits will end up as well. And I will buy roma tomatoes and various peppers from a garden center next week for the upper terrace.

I just spent the past few days turning over my garden completely (except where I already planted, I turned that over before planting) - a lot of work! I put most of my maple leaves on the garden last fall, so there were a lot of partially decomposed leaves to work in. Next year the soil should be very nice....

Then of course comes the clean up of my patio and planting (and building of) the walkway between the patio and the yard. It looks awful right now - that is a major goal this year!

As my little crabapple tree in my garden gets bigger, I will need to expand my garden beyond it. Too much shade in that area. I have planty of room to expand, it just takes time, energy, soil, and money. And I don't want to take out the tree, it's such a perfect place to play under.

And just for fun, this is a gift Owen made for me yesterday. What a lovely windchime made of "found" objects!

Here is the next photo from my albums, Owen with Grandpa Jack: