Tacie, Tacie, How does your garden grow? (Family Goals Part 2)

A second part of our family goal-setting session included the plan to plant a garden. We've been taught to be self-reliant (just a head's up to those of you who have not yet done your VT for the month of June -- this is the topic....but no, I didn't plan it that way.) We've talked about planting a garden ever since we moved into this house -- 3 YEARS AGO. Yes, that is about the pace at which we operate with most projects.
When we lived in Utah, we built a beautiful garden plot -- complete with darling little fence all around the edges. (Had to keep the dog out.) And then we moved -- before ever getting around to the actual planting.
When we lived in Cleveland Heights, we did plant a garden -- once, out of about 7 summers that we lived there. The garden did well for the most part. Granted, birds ate all the strawberries -- but our carrots grew (although they didn't taste good) and our tomato plants WENT CRAZY. We had so many tomatoes we didn't know what to do. We gave them away to anyone and everyone who wanted tomatoes...and made spaghetti sauce...the hard way. It was awesome -- nothing beats fresh tomatoes from the garden.
And so here we are again...having lived here for 3 years and FINALLY planting the garden. We talked about it the first summer...started tilling the ground last summer...and finally got around to planting it this summer.

It isn't pretty...but it is in.
For those of you who don't live in these parts...you might not know that we were thinking about building an ark in the month of May. Yes, it rained that much...or more. Even real farmers had trouble getting their gardens in due to the inclement conditions. So, when we finally had a nice day -- and a day off our many other activities - -it was do or die. Greg tilled the ground one more time while I ran to the garden store to get some seeds and plants. Afterall - it was scheduled to rain again the very next day.

Of course, the day we planted it was the hottest day of the year so far. And humid. Which made for a lovely combination of sweat in my eyes and dirt across my face as I attempted to dig out some rows. (Apparently, we lost our hoe in one of our moves.) I clearly had no idea what I was doing, (although I did have flashbacks to planting gardens for FHE as a kid. We LOVED to put the corn and pea seeds in my dad's perfectly laid out little mounds of dirt. In fact, I thought of my dad's garden a lot as I planted...and wondered how embarrassed I would be if my dad actually saw my pathetic attempt at planting. Then, if only to make myself feel better, I decided that my dad would be proud of my efforts, even as lame as they may be....cause that is just the kind of dad I have.)

I (along with my 'helpers') worked outside for several hours -- finally making Cambrie go inside when I feared she would pass out and die from some heat-related (or possibly dirt-related) illness. We made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, as most projects go around here, we had to stop about half-way through - -in order to attend Cannon's baseball game.
When we got home from the game and got kids in bed....I returned to the garden. It was nearly dark, still extremely hot and muggy and the mosquitoes were out in full force. Cannon decided to join me and we finished planting the garden. He held the flashlight down towards the ground as I dug holes with the shovel. (Not the way I would recommend doing it...especially in flip-flops.) We alternately swatted at mosquitoes and wiped the sweat from our eyes as we slapped those seeds into the ground.
Like I said, it isn't pretty...but it is in.
Amazingly, it's two weeks later and we have things growing. We are calling this our experiment year -- hoping to get some tomatoes, green peppers, celery, zucchini, cucumbers, peas, beans, cauliflower and broccoli.
I'm hoping we will have to figure out what to do with all of our bounty.

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Sidenote:
Remember how I said our tomatoes in Cleveland Heights took off like crazy? Yeah, well, I think we planted 8-12 plants that year. Hmmm...funny story. When I was at the garden store getting plants, I had no idea as to the dimension of our garden space -- or any concept of how many tomato plants I wanted. So...I opted for 36! And I planted all of them. Yeah...and about 1 dozen pepper plants (and since I really only use them for spaghetti sauce...that is a lot!)
Greg questioned why I even bought zucchini -- given that I have NEVER purchased one in the store. I looked at him incredulously and simply stated, "because the lady said they were easy to grow." Duh. 
Ha ha...if they do grow, I guess we'll be baking lots of bread. (Truth be told, I like zucchini - -especially on the grill. If, I mean, WHEN, they DO grow...my family will have lots of opportunities to learn to like it as well.)