Who Plants a Seed...

...beneath the sod

and waits to see

believes in God.

{Quote lovingly borrowed from a cross-stitched wall hanging in my mother-in-law's dining room.}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gardening continues to be touch-and-go around here.

I felt horrifically guilty for planting a large part of the remainder of the garden by myself 2 weeks ago. It was a crazy week, and over the course of a few evenings with the kids either in bed or at Grandma's, I stole a few hours for myself in the garden; just me, an old Nike shoebox full of seed packets, and a garden hoe.

It was marvelous.

There were a couple large and stressful things in my life at the time, each of which had birthed several smaller, stressful things, and kneeling in the dirt with tear-stained cheeks was just the cleansing this girl needed.

But I got the tots back in the garden with me last week, and it was heart-warming to watch them run from row to row excitedly pointing out the things that have sprouted.



Jack-Hammer's Hat



The carrots they had helped me plant are up along with the potatoes, shell peas, lettuce, spinach, beets, green beans, popcorn, Indian corn, watermelon and cucumbers. Little seedlings just never cease to amaze me; they're each unique and full of hope. As Ava exclaimed, "Mom! They're so beautiful!"

We worked together to plant the snow peas, 3 varieties of squash, and zucchini. I dabble in seed saving, and after Jack-Hammer ripped open the envelope of Buttercup squash seeds saved from last year's harvest, I asked him to "please put 5 seeds in this hole."

But he thought more like 20 seeds would be better, so we went with that. After all, we have plenty of Buttercup squash seeds and they were free.

I hate that we're still planting this late in June. I get a panicky, sad feeling when I face the possibility of not having a very good gardening year.

My tomatoes and peppers look sick, sad, and pathetic.  I'm gonna have to rig up something to protect them from the not-so-great elements we've all had to endure week after week around here. But 14 tomato plants and 17 peppers plants is just a lot to cover and protect.

What are your favorite tomato/pepper protecting methods?

Our new strawberries seem to be doing okay in their own little raised bed. Jack-Hammer enjoyed finding all the little white blooms, and I managed to stifle my fury when I discovered that half of the plants had their leaves eaten off.

Further inspection of the garden showed that something is also nibbling at my popcorn. I can just barely handle inclement weather, but animals eating at my plants? It makes me seethe.

I've spent a good portion of this planting season trying to resurrect plants from near-death encounters with our puppy, Belle. Trying to heal and protect sad-looking, once-thriving plants is getting a little old, but my determination usually out-weights my frustration.

The weeds are up, too, so walking by the vegetable garden or any one of the flower gardens usually means a quick stop to pull up a few of the intruders, which is fine because it's a great excuse to stop and get in the dirt where time always seems to slow a bit.

And the asparagus. Have I mentioned my asparagus? We're picking by the handfuls, eating by the platefuls, and giving away by the bagfuls.

Linking up again this week to KinderGARDENS.