In my pretty Garden

This year has been a really crazy one (seasonally that is.) Yes, here we go again, I am going to talk about the weather.

Our spring was VERY cold and snowy (through mid June +) and everything seemed to be behind by 2-4 weeks. We started our garden indoors back in March, and put it into the ground within water walls on May 4th. We didn't plant our other stuff until June 15th (rule of thumb here since it ALWAYS does a good hard frost around the 14th.) However, it was a pretty darn cool summer. I dare you to try and find anywhere in this blog where I complain about it being too hot. Nobody wanted to sign up for swimming lessons until the end of the summer because it seemed like torture to make our kids get wet in such cool weather.

 

Well, July came around and warmed up, but the monsoon season came as well, and it rained every afternoon. We started getting colder again in August (even had some snow nearby)...and well... we had hoped for a better summer.

WE also started out very gung ho, but I definitely petered out. After prepping and weeding and working so hard, I just got tired and wasn't motivated this year like I have been in the past. Our pumpkins and watermelon plants completely died. The seeds for squash and cucumbers and basil and peppers never came up... it was fairly disappointing. We got a few (3) zucchinis (not plants, actual guys we could eat.) So - it was disheartening.
However, we got some great carrots, and some of our tomatoes did well - some not so well - I guess that's how it goes. We planted a variety called 4th of July - guess when they were supposed to be bearing? Well, they just started. Unfortunately, most of them only get to be the size of a golf ball. We're going for all beefsteak next year.

We had a couple of heavy/hard frosts earlier this week and when we looked, we could see that most of our plants were completely fried. So, we rushed to bring in all of our tomatoes. We started later in the evening and ended up working in the dark!
However, I think we got most of them. We have boxes of green tomatoes in the basement just waiting to green up and be canned while we wait for some parts for our stove. Last year due to our excessive canning, all of the wiring under my burners melded together... I'm getting some different burners too hopefully this week so that this doesn't happen again.

Here are some photos from this past week. My husband playing with the kids (and a neighbor) after FHE,


the girls playing with one of our zucchinis and our daughter holding a friend's baby.