July 27, 2008

The Fruits of My Labor

This is when all the hard works starts to become rewarding. When all of the backbreaking hours of prepping garden and flower beds, laying irrigation lines and planting seeds and plants is long forgotten.

To me it is so rewarding to be able to look out and see something tangible that has resulted from all the work. It's relaxing to putter around picking berries, watching the apples grow and seeing the first glint of red in the skin of a tomato.

This is some of what I picked yesterday:

6 cups of raspberries. I think I already have enough for a batch of jam (with what I picked last week combined) and still have 50% of the berries left on the bushes yet!
11 pounds of peas -- almost a full Wal-mart bag. After they were shelled it yielded about a quart of veggies. Minus everything that KT ate while I was shelling them.

Although some of the garden stuff is behind where it should be for this time of year it's fantastic to see the progress it has made. The corn is weird in that some of the stalks are waist high, but others are still 4-6" tall. The beans are just beginning to form pods; tomatoes are starting to ripen on some plants while others haven't even formed fruits yet; the pepper plants are still small and do not have any fruits forming yet; and the strawberry patch will yield about 4 berries in total.

This is the 1st year that we've had such a nice yard/garden. It's enjoyable to sit outside (will be better when we spend the money to get a nice table set with a decent umbrella for shade) and we feel like we could actually entertain guests in our backyard. A much desired changed from the dustbowl that was our backyard in Provo.






















6 comments:

Ramosforest.Environment said...

Beautiful.

Jessica said...

Everything looks great! The rose bushes look beautiful, and the veggies look so yummy! Good job!

Marci said...

Thanks for sharing a bit of your world - the berries look nummy and the roses are gorgeous.

Kristen said...

Wow, you did such an amazing job this year. I am quite impressed.

Kristin, Rod, and Victoria said...

Everything looks amazing - especially that huge tub of raspberries!

What kind of peas are those? We never shelled the sugarsnaps my parents grew... although they hardly made it out of the garden before we ate them all!

Sounds like your tomatoes and peppers are right about where mine are... I have 2 tomato plants that are taller than I, but only 3 green fruits between the two of them! And my pepper plants are short with just a few flowers.

Anyhow, everything looks amazing (not surprising in the least bit!)

peter said...

I love your yard. Now that we have a yard I am trying to pull all that latent horticulture knowledge out of my brain to do something with it. I will say that Indiana has one perk...I really don't have to water. Crazy. And the tomatoes that we put in a week after we got here in June are already at least waist high with tons of green tomatoes on them. Maybe in a year or two I'll post pictures of my yard, too.