I'm pretty sure Punxsutawney Phil and all of his relatives have decided to vacation in Hume, WNY this summer. Having tired of his fame in Pennsylvania, the rolling, green hills of Hume have finally called his name, and he and his entire family have settled in our back yard, actually, to be more exact.... our vegetable patch.
After much deliberation, failed attempts at pie making, bread making, and gardening, I decided last year that you can teach yourself anything if you can read! Well having put that theory to the test I can now attest to the fact that, in my case, that is not true. I have unwittingly surprised a person or two with my delightfully soggy pies, and single handedly burnt bread in a bread maker. Gardening was my last hope at trying to prove this fact. Well, you see, I didn't really factor in all of the factors that are out of my control; the weather, the bugs, the critters, my rather (black, but turning ever so slightly green thumb), to mention a few.
I haven't posted in a while because to be honest with you I was feeling rather deflated. You see, my loving husband and our youngest son spent most of a week 'off' from work constructing a fence around our vegetable patch. Our daughters and I, having successfully grown all sorts of delightful vegetables in a method called 'winter sowing', were eager to transplant our flourishing vegetable seedlings into the wonderful garden spot we had created for them. Sun, mature manure, right here from our very own farm, what more could a little seedling desire. Well, maybe, that the whole woodchuck population would not decide to move in right next door! Corn.... I've come to the conclusion that ground hogs do not like corn, peppers, tomatoes, or swiss chard. Beans..... that's what they love, bean plants. We must have planted close to 70 bean plants - all eaten, every single last one of them, practically overnight. Dessert, well what better than cucumber plants, washed down with a mouthful of zucchini seedlings!
I'm trying to be ever the optimist and to be thankful for the lessons we are learning, and the few choice vegetables our vacationing groundhogs have decided they are too fancy for. I know to the trained eye our vegetable patch would look anything but productive. You see, I feel rather silly to admit this, but it never really dawned on me, in my delight at putting my hand to something new, and watching with bated breath for our vegetables to grow, that whilst we were watering the vegetables, we were also watering the weeds sprouting up between our garden plots. Needless to say, our vegetable garden is taking on the rather ominous look of a rather well planned out wild weed garden. However, nestled in amongst the weeds are some of our more successful stories on this journey called gardening.
I promised to take you on this new journey, including, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here are a few photos of our more successful parts of the garden, and well a few cute pig photos just because.... well why not. I'd love to hear how your gardens are going, so feel free to leave a comment on our blog page below.
Kind Regards, a rather vexed vegetable grower.
Our corn, it seems to be oblivious to our really dry weather and distasteful to the woodchucks.
Swiss Chard - I'm rather impressed with this. Maybe the groundhogs like me, would prefer Swiss chocolate......
and well, just because who can resist a cute piggie photo. SallyMae enjoying some cuddles with her ever popular tongue sticking out pose!
