Our First Garden, Come What May

This picture is similar to the one I posted recently. It's our empty garden plot. However, just one week later, the weeds look healthier than ever, so green, so ALIVE. I also mentioned earlier that so far, the garden has been a great source of contention between us. And it was again last night, until we arrived at a certain point. That point was...Actual Manual Labor. Suddenly, we were Team Kyburz again. Don't worry when I use the word contention. It wasn't that bad. It's just that with our very different gardening backgrounds, we had to negotiate until we reached a point of agreement (tolerance?). We drove over to Cook's Nursery and chose some plants. I let K choose ALL of the tomato varieties. We had originally decided on five vegetables to plant, but K suggested three and now I see his wisdom. He chose the corn and I chose the cucumbers. My big "win" if you will, was getting the plastic. K's still not sold on that, but after weeding and hoeing and working that 10'x15' plot over by hand last night, I think he's partially sold by now.

It was fairly windy and so getting the plastic DOWN was a challenge. We were grabbing all sorts of things to keep the stuff in place. Fortunately, most of our outdoor meals have been challenging in this way, so we were fairly practiced up at overcoming this obstacle. We know how to "hold down the fort" so to speak. K directed me to lie down at one point until he could get it staked. No, there's no picture. We planted nine tomatoes, three cucumbers and two rows of corn, and then routed our water hose as strategically as we could around the plants, staking it down every few feet.

All done! It may be the jungles of Africa. It may fail completely. However, it is what it is--our first garden, come what may.

We affectionately refer to the neighboring plots as The Felt Farm. The plot directly East of ours belongs to Emily who is all of eight years old. She and her mom said she's planting corn there, so we put our two rows right next her so that all of our corn can cross-pollinate. Hope it works!

Grow, Cucumber! Grow, Tomato!