Trying to Turn My Brown Thumb Green

Jim has "gardener" blood flowing through him. His Grandpa Jack had a farm and his dad worked hard on that farm. There has always been a garden in the Barber family. However, the Perez family did not. I remember when I was really little my mom tried to have a garden. But I didn't grow up with that experience.

It is known around our house that I can barely keep a house plant alive. (So I forget to water them, so what!) So Jim and I have a deal. If he takes care of the garden I will cook, freeze, can, or otherwise process anything he grows and brings into the house. That has worked well for us so far but life is busy. I have had to learn to help out.

This spring we went and bought our plants for our garden. It was on March 15th. I took pictures because I love the way the garden transforms from empty beds to instant garden when we plant those little starts. I love the look of the smooth brown dirt with no weeds (yet). I wanted to blog about it then but, like I said before, life is busy.

These are our tomatoes. We planted 8 Roma tomato plants this year. I guess I will be making lots of spaghetti and pizza sauce this fall!

This is our raspberry bed. Jim had cut back late year's plants and we were left with these cute little baby raspberry plants.

This year I filled this whole box with different kinds of peppers. I planted red and purple bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, ancho peppers and something Jim HAD to have called "Big Jim" peppers.

These are our cute little baby peas. Jim planted those as seeds way back in March. They loved our cool rainy spring, even if we didn't.

These are our rows of lettuce. One row of romaine and one row of - oh! now I can't remember the name! Next to that we planted a row of pole beans.

Well, Jim has been gone this week with Josh on a Boy Scout canoe trip. I have been responsible for taking care of the garden. My biggest fear is forgetting to water. I remembered to water this time! I know, amazing. But more than that, I didn't want Jim to have to do any yard work when he got home so he could spend all his time paying attention to me. So this morning we got started before it got too hot. We trimmed, edged and mowed the lawns. We pulled all the weeds. We watered everything. And it looked so good I had to take another picture.

This picture includes the yummy grapes and the six rows of corn planted (on the left) at the last minute. (also the chicken coop Jim has been working really hard on. Blog post to come soon) We really love corn and last year I learned how to bottle it. It was so delicious we ran out of it last month.

I don't think I could do this without Jim. In fact, I know I couldn't. He inspires me to want to get my hands dirty. And though I am totally worn out and will probably be a little sore tomorrow, I have a real sense of accomplishment. The yard looks great. I think Jim will appreciate how it much work we put into it. And he can direct all that appreciation into making sure all the camping gear gets put away!