In my pretty garden

the herbs and flowers and vegetables are growing. Since we moved here, I have wanted to have a garden. The first summer we were here, I just blankly stared at my yard wondering what would grow where, what all those weird plants were, and wondering if there was actually a spot in the whole thing that got full sun. Full sun is a rare commodity in these parts! The second summer we were here, I had a newborn baby and was gone the last month of summer. Neither lent themselves to being able to plant or take care of a garden.

It turns out (after watching my yard carefully for many months) there IS a spot in my yard that gets full sun all day long. WAY out in the far corner, there is a spot!So, this summer, with lots of help from David and Grace, I finally have one. Well, I guess I should say that Grace has one. The newly painted and decorated sign hanging in the corner says "Grace's Garden." Next year, when Harriet is old enough to help, we'll hang another sign that says "Hattie's Herbs." The project has been really fun for us to do together. It gives Grace and me a daily "something to do" in the morning as we go out together and water the garden with her new watering can from Drumlin Farm and look for weeds. Haven't had any weeds yet. We have also spent the better part of this week making the big garden sign and the little signs that say what is growing that you stick in the dirt.

We are doing a garden project called "square foot gardening." It's a whole style of gardening I had never heard of until someone in the ward introduced me to it. You take a 4x4 square raised box and divide it into 16 "square feet." In each square you plant something different. We have a few squares that are the same, but I guess that's ok. The idea with the square foot garden is that you don't have to actually walk IN the garden to do any weeding or harvesting. You can reach any plant in the garden from the outside of the box. It is also raised up from the ground so that you can control the soil better and also the water (here you sometimes fear that you will get too much water in the garden when it rains for days on end.) In the first box we built, we put starts we got from David's colleague at work. She hooked us up with rosemary, chives, garlic chives, and a few flowers. We also planted some cilantro and basil in that box. In our second box, we are trying out starting everything from seed. I know that the growing season isn't long enough here to get to the harvesting of some things from seed, but it's an experiment and Grace had fun choosing the seed packets at the store and carefully planting each seed. I really hope they sprout, or I will have a disappointed 4 year old. I will have to go find plants to put in their place so that she has something to keep watering! She planted sunflowers, another type of flower that I can't remember, pumpkins, two kinds of tomotoes, and cucumbers.

We are really hoping to get a few herbs because we like to cook with fresh herbs and they are so dang expensive at the store - $3-5 for a little sprig of basil? And, we are also hoping to get our favorite salad ingredients - tomatoes and cucumbers are staples at our dinner table. Grace desperately wants to grow her own pumpkin for halloween. We hope that one works out too!