Fresh Dirt

Its been fun to see the daily progress in our garden. We're probably dorks but G and I get so thrilled at every little seedling that makes its way through the dirt. Even the tiniest little spurt of growth is exciting. Our hard work is finally starting to show, too, which is nice. But I think we definitely qualify as gardening junkies now. I salivate over the garden landscapes I see in Sunset magazine. G always points out the nice yards we run across as we're out walking the dogs. Terrible, huh?

The flowers are in bloom. The cherry tree lost its blossoms but has lots of little green cherries, probably 5x more than the small little handful we got last year. The front yard can probably use a bit more work but all in all, its promising to be a good summer.

This last weekend we finally started putting some of our seedlings into the ground. The squash has been coming along well, and they're so hardy that we decided that they'd brave the cold nights just fine. So they've been scattered around the yard.

We have 6 squashes this year so we thought we'd try to plant this one in the shade where nothing else can really grow. If it dies, well, we're already going to have more zucchini than we know what to do with.

These 3 - a zuke, butternut, and yellow squash can battle it out amongst themselves. There should be plenty of room for all of them, but hopefully one doesn't choke out the other.

Maybe the hardiest of the 3, but they're all pretty impressive already. It was crazy, one of them looked a little wilted in the morning so we decided to hold off on transplanting it. But a couple of hours in the shade and it perked right up, getting even bigger than before, if that's even possible.

We planted the strawberries in the front. There's been a lot written these days about edible front yards. And I'm not going there yet, but I have to admit that I'm a little intrigued. We do occasionally get kids messing around in our front yard, so I'd hate to tempt them more. But between the dogs (one night, I let them out when I heard horsing around and some kid who was still hanging around the yard actually kind of dropped to the ground as Mia rushed him . . . probably to lick him, but he didn't know that) and G scaring them off with a pellet gun (that was pretty hilarious too, they took off running), we're probably safe. So we're hoping to start a little something in the front yard this year -- a few strawberry plants, hopefully a blackberry bush if I can find one, and a grape vine for our front porch. If it works, we might be looking at even more crops next year.

One of the strawberry plants already has a few berries!


And of course, our pride and joy is our "pepper kingdom." G ordered a bunch of crazy pepper plants from an online vendor in the east coast. So we're now the owners of some of the hottest peppers in the world. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the hottest pepper is one from India called Bhut Jolokia. Guess whose house you can check it out at this summer? We have some other super hot ones to0 -- 2 different varieties of habaneros, something else called the Trinidad Scorpion and the Devil's Tongue. Plus we still have the tamer ones we grew last year -- some serranos, jalapenos, thai dragons, cayennes. We planted all of the peppers in a planter box last year and stuck it in our dog run where they get the most sun. This year, we've decided to add to the group by planting the new varieties in individual planters that are big enough to house them throughout the season. The entire collection (along with some sweet peppers) is now ready for viewing. And of course, if you're looking for some heat later this summer, come on by.

Its nice to know that our dog run is getting some use after all, seeing as how our dogs don't actually hang out in it.