Gardening

We planted our first vegitable garden in 2000. What fun we had! Our garden flourished. We had tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, broccoli, radishes, corn, onions, beans, peas, sweet peppers and hot peppers. Laura had a lot of fun making pickles, canning whole tomatoes and making sauces and salsa. We also froze our corn, beans and peas. Jim had some hot peppers (jalepeno, habanero, serano and hungarian wax) that would have surely taken first place at the fair had we entered them. In 2001 we expanded the garden and added carrots, acorn squash, zuchini squash, yellow squash and potatoes. Laura also put in a small herb garden with garlic, dill and basil. . Laura is really looking forward to canning and freezing the vegitables again this year. The bugs got to alot of our garden in 2001. All the squash, and most of the potatoes were destroyed. With the baby due in May, this years our garden may not be so elaborate. We are talking about just corn, tomatoes, onions, radishes and peppers.

Laura has also enjoyed flower gardening. Our first fall in this house (1999) she planted bulbs for tulips, daffodils, lilies, and hyacinth. The flower bed was filled in with annuals our first year here and wild flowers in 2000. In 2001 she added a few moss roses and moved some day lilies from the backyard up front (though they didn't bloomed ). We tried sunflowers in 2001 for the first time. The birds and the bees had fun picking at them.. Down our front walk we planted moss roses in 2000.. To our surprise they came back up in 2001! Moss roses are supposed to be an annual but we have heard that they come sometimes. We didn't know they were going to come back and had planted violas and pansies in there too. In our tiny wall garden beside the driveway we planted zinnias from seed this year.