Happy Birthday to Me!

It's not quite my birthday yet, but I already have my birthday gift from John: a vegetable garden!

Actually, his part was the digging up and preparing of the plot where the garden will be. I get to plant it and take care of it. (And, yes, it really honesty is something I want to do. What can I say? Call me "Plant Girl".)

(OK, don't. At least not yet. Let's see if I can actually keep plants growing and produce some kind of harvest first, shall we? OK.)

I figure every once in a while you need to start a new hobby. And what with the "tough economic times" and the price of food going up, this hobby couldn't get started at a better time!

I have some photographic documentation of my birthday gift in progress over the last two weekends.

Here we have the area after being mowed and weed-eated (is that a word?) to rid the plot of as much extraneous grass (aka "weeds") as possible.


The ground has now been tilled and a trench dug around the outside to accommodate the limestone border.


Isn't John doing a great job making sure the limestone is level and everything?

Now it's time to mix up the dirt. Oh, sorry. I've just been reminded that it is "soil", not dirt. I'm sure it's all a very specific mixture of organic material, peat moss, top soil, and sand but there is definitely a reason I am not the one out there with a till, a rake, and a shovel. I do not want to understand the science of soil. I just want to plant things and watch them grow.

And hopefully reap the harvest of our own organic vegetables. Someday soon.

Ta-da! It is ready to be planted.

Since next weekend really is my birthday, I will happily visit some nurseries and purchase my plants and/or seeds. More documentation of the vegetable garden experiment is sure to come.