In which the narrative returns to the farm and looks at the garden

Without intending to be contrary, how DOES the garden grow?

Vegetable garden (above), herb bed (below).

We are eating snap peas every day now.

and also...

potatoes!

I did plant yellow and red potatoes in the garden, but they aren't ready for harvest yet. The potatoes we are eating now are the offspring of "russets gone wild" --baking potatoes that got forgotten for too long in the kitchen last winter. Jim wanted to give these to the chickens but I said, "Go throw them on the manure pile instead."

(Yes, I've done this before.)

So, with no effort expended in planting, weeding, or watering, we started digging up young potatoes this week. Do you know how wonderful fresh potatoes taste fried up with a couple of eggs that were just laid an hour before breakfast? Plus a scattering of chives from the herb garden, of course.

Oooooooh, yeah.

The beans are growing well now, and they should be blossoming any day.

The pumpkin plants, while still puny, are further along already than the squash plants ever got in the disappointing garden last year.

Outside of the vegetable garden, the blueberry plants are finally starting to "blue up" a bit. Willie and I often stand there for 20 minutes at a time, grazing straight off the bushes.

The grape plants are more enthusiastic than last year, having been freed of blackberry vine tyranny for more than a year. Our biggest challenge is keeping the goats away from the grapevines!

Up in the orchard, the cherry trees sulked their way through our rainy spring and rainy early summer, producing very few cherries (which the birds ate). Ah, well. Perhaps next year.

The plum tree seems happy, though. Last year we got so many plums that Jim made ten gallons of plum wine, which will be ready to drink this winter. I hope we get another crop like that one!

The apple trees are happier this year. They've been neglected for so long that Jim pruned them this year with the chainsaw. Some of the older trees didn't appreciate the loss of all those gigantic sucker branches, and aren't producing fruit this year. By contrast, the younger apple trees are doing much better!

And then, there's the flowers. The echinacea bush is just starting to bloom. My gardening friend told me that although echinacea is an annual, it will happily re-seed and spread if I let it. Ooooooh, flowers that don't need my help? Sign me up!

The roses seem oblivious to my refusal to care for them, and open up new blossoms every week. I told all the rose plants that they were welcome to stay as long as they didn't expect me to dump bug-killer and fungicide all over them, and I guess they took me seriously.

My favorite plant is the lavender. It grows, spreads, seeds, and de-bugs itself entirely without my help.

Someday, Haiku Farm will be completely knee-deep in lavender plants!Life is good.

You knew that, right?