Hope Springs

It may sound strange, (well, maybe not if you've been reading my blog for any length of time...) but I love the sight of my empty garden in the spring. All that open space and warm soil - it inspires me and fills me with hope of what may come forth in a few short months. I have to laugh at myself when shoots start making their way up out of the earth because I am always amazed that it works! That you can put a miniscule seed down into the ground, cover it up, water it occasionally if it doesn't rain, and viola!

Lettuce!

Sugar Snap Peas!

The other night at dinner the kids nonchalantly mentioned that there were cherries on the tree we planted last summer. Keith and I immediately jumped up out of our seats and ran outside. We spent about 30 minutes running around the yard, from fruit tree to fruit tree (well, we have nine) in awe of the baby fruit which seemed to appear overnight. We were like little kids, high fiving each other, laughing, making plans for the future (in other words, break out the recipes) as if we had anything really to do with this little miracle.

On Mother's Day we went to a local farm to purchase seedlings for the veggies we hope to grow over the summer. We selected several varieties of tomato, eggplants, zucchinis, cucumbers, escarole, melons, green beans and peppers. I think that is all... and I already had started several types of lettuce, swiss chard and spinach and the snap peas from seed. Of course, taking several vacations and spending lots of time down the shore over the summer kind of makes the whole garden thing a little hard. Thankfully, we have a sweet little neighbor who is willing to water it for us while we are away - even though she doesn't care for vegetables so much herself...

The promise of blueberries....

So for now we will wait... that the groundhog will not interfere, the birds will not feast and the insects will not invade. Now that the plants are in the ground, I will spend much time perusing my recipe collection and planning harvest parties in my mind.

Oh, and then there are all the herbs - how could I forget the herbs?? I'll save them for another post.

How does your garden grow? Are you a veggie person or flower person?