My favorite time in the garden...

is when I get to pick the "fruits" (or veggies in this instance) of my labor. Although there isn't a whole lot of labor involved the way I garden. It starts out like this in late April/early May:

(that's my little helper!)

and ends up like this by mid-June.

and then we get to eat!

Yes, that's only 6-7 weeks from "naked" soil to food on the table. The tomatoes are just starting to turn and I have 3 pepper plants that are aaaaaalmost ready to pick (salsa anyone?). Can't wait to show you some of the "fun" foods I'm planning to make with my vegetables.

Happy gardening!

Tanesha

I'm crafty, I'm a gardener, I'm a Mom!

..not necessarily in that order!

Last year I decided to plant a vegetable garden. I had come across the book, Lasagna Gardening, and knew as soon as I saw the subtitle, "No Digging, No Trilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!" it was the answer to the inner princess in me that loved the food you could grow in a garden, but hated the actual work you had to put into planting one.

Yes, that's the lazier side of me as well as the fact that I am a busy Mom with a full-time job that allows little extra time to such things as HOBBIES! I had to sit and think for a minute the last time I'd actually had 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to DO any of the hobbies I had once worked on almost daily. The cause...my wonderful daughter Samantha, but more specifically the unexpected and constant exhaustion I felt at just the thought of adding ONE MORE THING to my already long list of daily "to do's."

My favorite hobby, quilting, was something I relished in the not-so-distant past. Starting about 20 years ago, I had graduated over the years from making your average "bed" quilts from patterns like Sunbonnet Sue and Log Cabin, to more sophisticated landscape art quilts.

I would attend quilt shows - my favorite being the Houston International Quilt Festival every October, take 2-3 day classes, sigh..... oh those days are long gone. Traded for Saturday morning classes at Little Gym trying to get my 13 month old to do a somersault, and driving around town looking for the best daycare possible.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE being a Mommy. After my husband, Samantha, is unequivocally the best thing to happen in my life since well, anything. But oh how I longed for those moments where I could lose myself in my craft, all day if I wanted.

So, long story short, last year I embarked on a small vegetable garden as a good way to grow some organic vegetables using the basics from the book, and do a fun project with Samantha. We got an excellent bounty of tomatoes, herbs, and peppers (hence all the salsa I made) and this year I embarked on expanding the garden to twice it's size (in length) and added in a few growing pots from A Garden Patch.

 

So far, so good!