Take Off Day!

I should be studying. My final is tomorrow. I haven't posted in a while, and it was a while before that. I feel like I have less and less to post about, even though things are happening. Everything is in the ground now. There are a few things inside that I just haven't hardened off yet (basil, a few of the peppers and a few petunias). I still plan to put some more squash and zucchini seeds in the ground, I just haven't been very motivated to do it because the garden looks "fully planted" I still have some of the extra tomato plants sitting around on the garden, and that's probably my issue. They are filling the extra spots where the last of my seeds should go in.

Last Saturday was take off day for the robins. I watched them for hours! I got to see the last two fly out of the nest, and watch as the parents and several other robins show them the ropes. I brought worms to a few of them, and got to watch them eye the wigglers and nibble on them.

Last baby to take off! I was really excited to catch this picture!

Baby by the mailbox, with parents watching out.

One of the babies made its way into the turtle pen.

We were sitting in the living room in the evening, and we thought we heard a bird IN the house, but one of the babies had just returned to the porch and spent some time crying for momma. I haven't seen any of them since that night. Though I love to watch them, I'm glad to not have to worry about the dive bombing parents when I walk to my mailbox.

I have hopes of a harvest in the near future:

My snaps peas have blossoms everywhere, and there are little baby peas showing up!

My first strawberry is also blushing :)

Major Update

Besides the fact that in a week I'll finally be graduating from nursing school, my in-laws came in town this weekend from Pennsylvania. That means I've had no time to update this, even though I've spent a lot of time outside, and in the garden a bit. My husband and I worked really hard to get some things done before they got here.

Here's a picture of all of the work my husband did. He dug out all of the dirt here, and helped me plant all of the plants. We have a lot of bulbs and lilies that we planted too, but they'll hopefully be popping up later.

During the process of planting tomatoes, I found small snake-sized worms!

I now have my first tomato blossom! This is from my Sweet 100 Cherry tomato.

The baby birds are growing like crazy! Their mom and dad hate it when I take these pictures, and I inevitably squeal as I run back inside the front door when they dive bomb me.



I'm going to try to show a few side by sides from April 26 to today. In just over a week, I've seen tons of growth.

We were able to build and install the removable structure with bird netting for the strawberry patch. It's loaded with strawberries now, and I have no interest in sharing them with the local birds, bunnies, squirrels, or wandering cat.

We had our first pea blossom this year, and now we have many!! I was surprised to see it open, because it was pink! Last year we had only white ones, so I assumed that was the only kind. This year we have both, because I planted the Dwarf Gray sugar too.

I really need to get my pepper, squash, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers in the ground. I'll do all of that today. I have all of these other tomato plants to get to friends, they are really starting to look funky. I don't know if it's just all of the rain, but the rest of my tomato plants really need to get into the ground!

This was last weeks harvest, I missed Harvest Monday this week. I used these radishes in a veggie pizza recipe from Pampered Chef for church. We also ate all of that lettuce in a salad! It's fun to finally get somethings that we can eat from our garden!

Harvest Monday

Yay! I have more radishes! I've picked more since I took this picture. I need to do a full update soon. I went to PA for a wedding this weekend, and it rained the whole time I was gone. I can't even believe the amount of growth my lettuce, peas, and broccoli went through while I was gone!
Here are just a few more things I came home to from the weekend. I took this for the picture of the broccoli, but this just shows you the project I'll be tackling now. I'm going to try to go pick up all of the helicopter seeds that have completely littered my garden.

I also found an egg shell on the porch, and this is what I found when I took the picture of the nest!

Join in on the Harvest fun over at Daphne's Dandelions!

In the Garden

Thanks Gretchen for following my blog!

Just a few updates. I was looking back through some pictures so far, and can't believe how quickly things grow. My peas have grown between 5 and 10 inches in the past 9 days, depending on the plant!

My broccoli seems to have finally recovered from the sunburn I allowed early on. The same plants that I put into my friends' gardens look way better than mine since they were not transplanted and sun burnt all at the same time. You live and learn. I still think they'll do alright.

My lettuce seems to finally have shown some growth! This picture is a bit misleading, because there are two plants right next to each other that I haven't thinned out yet, but even still, the growth is there!

If you can tell the weeds from the yellowed baby spinach seedlings, you'll see they haven't grown in at least a month. I'm pulling them today. I think I'll attempt spinach in only one of the blocks again. I'll do cilantro in the other one. I don't want to waste precious real estate on the spinach if they aren't going to produce. My friend's garden that I helped her plant already has several leaves on her spinach and hers were planted after mine. Not sure what I did wrong.

We've got a bird's nest on our front porch that we found the past week. I'm thrilled, though my husband not so much. I'm a big fan of robins; he doesn't want poop on the porch. Here is another perk to having a 6'6" 19 year old living in my house... :) I got this picture!