Peas Please!

Ah, Summertime. It's here once again. This Summer is so much different than every other in my life for several reasons. For one, it's our first Summer as parents. Jon and I have enjoyed several Summers just the two of us but now we are blessed with sweet little Chase. We get to make plans that include him, so even though we plan to do much of the same things we always have- none of them will be the same anymore, and that's a good thing. We couldn't be happier. There's also the fast that it's the first Summer that we will navigate without Albert. My heart still aches over his absence every day. I won't carry on about that. It would be easy for this to become "The fifty billion reasons I need my Grandpa back" blog. 

One of the things I looked forward to this year is the fact we have a garden now. When we decided not to sell our house, we also put in a few garden boxes because I refused to not have one if I'm committing to stay here for at least 5 more years.
So, my awesome husband went to work and built six raised beds.
And yes, that's a marching band in that picture. I will tell you all about the marching band later. 

We are both new to gardening. I mean- mostly. I remember picking peas and raspberries at my grandparent's every Summer since the beginning of forever, but as far as the know-how and work of actually making a garden a success, no. That's new to me. I always got to skip that and get straight to the good part- the food!
We started everything from seeds, and for a while I didn't know if they were going to take. Jon and I would get excited every time we'd see green pop up, and then we'd watch for a week only to discover it was indeed just a weed. Just when I was pretty sure our attempts were not enough, all of a sudden everything just... flourished. It got too hot too fast for our cauliflower, which I figured was going to be the case but it didn't hurt to try anyway. Everything else though- peas, beans, peppers, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, strawberries... they're all doing well. Our peas are getting their very first pods this week and I am so excited. 

There's a lot of things we will do a little differently next year, but I'm pretty proud at our first go at gardening. I hope we can get the rest of our yard fixed up in a timely manner so we can enjoy it for the Summertime but at least our garden is doing well. I can't wait for everything to mature and be ready for picking so we can enjoy and share the fruits of our labor! 

I'm also excited to be able to teach Chase hands-on about where some of our food comes from. Being able to provide clean, organic produce straight from our ground is an added bonus too. 

I didn't get raspberries in this year but I have a spot all primed and ready for them next year. I know they are fragile plants but hopefully they will take. 

I also didn't get my herb garden going this year. We are doing it gutter-style along the front of the massive shed Jon built. I think it will make that less of an eyesore, by providing a wall of yummy green goodness. Not that Jon's shed isn't great- it's just a shed. I'd rather look at a wall of living green herbs than a giant white box.