How Does Your Garden Grow?

Why, how kind of you to ask!

We are inundated with green, as a matter of fact, and I’m wondering if anyone has time to come over and help us weed.  Also, why don’t any of the vermin eat the weeds since they are so prolific?  Why must they attack my vegetables?

I always said that our street was the french version of Wisteria Lane, so how befitting that we plant a wisteria to grow up along our gate and form a canopy of heavenly scent over the door?  It just sat there for so long, but finally sent it’s sentry out and here we are!  (That dark blob is the mailbox to the right with a branch of laurel sticking out above it).

And now for the trees.  This is our hazelnut tree at the entrance to our vegetable garden.  I don’t remember it creating such a dense ceiling of leaves last year.  But I was still in suburban shock back then.

And (sniff), our one apricot tree that produced fruit (apparently) for the first time, after much pruning and coaxing from yours truly to nourish that fruit, ended up contracting a parasite and lost all its silver bells and cockleshells.  (sob!)

However, there’s still the other apricot tree, which I just learned from the neighbors (who came over to explain the ways of the garden to us) sprung up all on its own.  This tree is doing just fine, but I thought this branch was interesting – on its last legs and bearing one last fruit.  Kind of like me having a third child.

I have loads of people offer to come help make jam.

Now, on to the other fruits and veggies.  Our raspberry bushes are producing already (and I just noticed my first strawberry, but only after I had shot and downloaded all these pictures).  I know the berries are miniscule and not even red yet, but I’m going to have my very own fruit salad one day!  And if the gulf stream continues to be threatened, I can add pineapple and bananas to the mix!  I’m so excited!

These are the sunflowers along the wall.  (And all the weeds alongside them – gulp!  I’m found out).

And the zucchini with the potatoes beyond.  I know it’s not a big deal to you, but I put seeds and stuff in the ground, and all these plants came up!  That’s pretty miraculous to me.  Not as much fun as making babies, but pretty cool nonetheless!

The corn.  You can’t buy husks of corn in France, at least not anywhere near me.  SO. I’m pretty excited about the corn.  Okay, admittedly this picture is not exciting at all.  It’s neither artistic nor impressive to anyone other than me, kind of like showing pictures of your kids to strangers on the bus (which I don’t even do), but there you go.  That’s Sally there, and the one whose ears stick out is Ronald ….

Alright, let’s speed things up here.  Tomatoes to the left …

Chinese cucumbers to the right (which I’ll have to stake, as they are climbers).  My Chinese friends brought the seeds back for me; you have to cook these cucumbers.  It should be fun.

So that’s how my garden grows.

I was pretty excited to go out and cut my head of lettuce for lunch, and decided to go crazy and dig up one of my onions … see the bulbs there?  No, neither did I.  I think they’re not quite ready to be dug up.  But we cut the green stems over our boiled potatoes and pretended they were chives.  Yum, yum.

Okaaaay.  Are you all sufficiently impressed? Good!

Stay where you are and you can be my pretty maids all in a row.

* This post originally appeared in my former blog, Perfect Welcome, and may contain some modifications or discrepancies in the names or comments.

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