first fruits [or veggies]

We went all-out in the garden department this year.

After our tremendous disaster of a weed garden last year, Mark and I spent two weekends this past May prepping the garden. We made trips to Home Depot and Lowes and bought all our starter plants ~ Mark started everything from seed last year and vowed never to do that again! Haha!

We planted blueberries, grapevines, green beans, red, yellow, and green bell peppers, tons of different tomatoes, yellow squash, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, watermelon, pumpkin, and corn. Yeah ~ we think we're farmers....

Anyway, I really wish we had taken pics of the garden when it first started growing, because now it's out of control! {in a good way :)} The corn is almost as tall as me, the pumpkin vines are humongous, and we've picked our first four zucchinis! Enjoyed zucchini sauteed with butter and salt and chocolate chip zucchini bread this week ~ yummo! On tap: Italian Tortellini Soup with fresh zucchini to be frozen for the fall/winter.

One of the benefits of gardening ~ besides the dirt under your fingernails and the incessant poison ivy rash all over your body ~ is how excited the kids have been to watch everything growing. I like how it gets us all out of the house after dinner, too, to water the garden. Inevitably, we all end up outside on the swings or having a catch ~ LOVE that! :)