Things are starting to grow!

You can see the radishes in the first planter box behind Charlie and I in this picture. We have carrot sprouts in the next box. And I have chives, basil, rosemary and cilantro thriving in the last garden box. Right now the third box is holding our rain gage and is waiting to be planted with some more carrots. They were so successful last year we wanted to be sure to plant them in stages this year to prolong our yield.

Behind the radish planter, you can see the compost pile. Thankfully, the neighbor closest to this heap loves gardening and understands this pile of what looks to be a lot like kitchen trash (which I guess it technically is as we daily add our egg shells and fruit and veggie scraps). It also is host to yard waste: sod, grass clippings, weeds, tree clippings and one dead pine tree (we thought maybe we'd plant a cherry tree in its place). It really isn't trash, it is a promise of things to come.

In front of me is the strawberry bed. I've been picking off the white flowers to keep them from producing this year in hopes to extend the life of the plants and to get a bigger yield next year. It's all I can do to make myself prune them back in this way, but I'm trying to be a patient gardener. We'll have to get our strawberries from the farmers market for one more year.

One of the raspberry bushes has a nice green start on it. The other still looks like a stick in the dirt. The blackberry bush is coming in strong (pictured left).

We've lost all the sunflowers that we planted from starts but the seeds we sowed directly into the ground are thriving. The girls love to take everyone to the back of the garden and tell them about the sunflower forest that will soon be growing in that very spot. I'll need to plant a few more seeds to fill in the gaps of the lost plants and then it will be a nice full bed for the kids to hide in this summer.

Like the sunflowers, what we lost in the lettuce starts we have more than made up in the seeds I planted. Again, a lesson in patience. Our efforts to get a jump start on the season by starting seeds indoors weren't successful; we were much better off waiting to plant outdoors which is a lesson I hope I won't forget next spring.

So, I think it's time to do some more planting! Today I hope to get the rest of the sunflowers planted, some additional lettuce and carrots, peppers, beans, onions, pumpkins, watermelon, and corn. Yep, we'll try some corn this year and see if we plant enough rows to get any actual corn—I'm a little skeptical so I've already considered how to double the size of this bed next year!