Let's think about other fun things, while we wait.

I've been keeping myself busy this summer in my yard. I figure, next summer, I'm going to have a little peanut tagging along (it's unbelievable when I really stop and just think about that). So this year, I've been focusing on getting the yard how I want it. The vegetable garden is perfect this year--last year we had the "sprawling tomato" problem. Looking at our garden last year, one would be tempted to think that cherry tomatoes are an invasive species in Washington. This year, we bought cages--we let one tomato plant run free, kind of "control" tomato plant. I like the order of the cages. Unfortunately, the "free range" tomato is doing much better. This is just my luck. I'm never going to convince John to cage the tomatoes next year.

Whatever. I'm going to be way too busy next year to worry about tomatoes.

Anyway, the vegetable garden is so cool this year. We planted HUGE sunflowers and they are about 12 feel tall right now! They're gorgeous. The peas did okay, although I think I accidentally pulled a few of them out of the ground while I was weeding. I kind of "poked" them back into the dirt--FYI, that doesn't work so well. My husband doesn't know about this. He just thinks it was a bad year for peas.

The rest of the yard is very well-established. We have a huge shade garden and partly sunny garden that the previous owner designed and planted. It's beautiful. Our friends say it's like a spa at our house in the summer. We didn't really have a full sun garden, though. So, after the wedding, we had a gorgeous stone wall built on the southeast corner of the property (I need to put in a plug for Josh, who built the wall. That was the best money I have EVER spent on a house). Anyway, we used to have a long, steep, dry, grass-covered hill where the wall now is. It was a nightmare to mow the lawn in that part of the yard. Here is the wall in the winter:



This is obviously before anything was planted. For those people who don't know about the growing season in the pacific northwest, it is long. Stuff grows. Stuff spreads. You can't kill anything. It's the perfect place to garden.

Here is the garden now (this morning, in fact):