The Garden

Gardening in Wyoming is frustrating to me. Hopefully July and August will win me over, but June is hard. When we finally reached the end of May and thus the go-ahead for planting most things in our area, I was already feeling way behind the spring vegetable game. I thought I'd surely missed the appropriate time to plant lettuce and peas... until a full week into June the soil still hadn't warmed up enough to sprout beans or cucumbers and we got a hard frost that turned the potatoes black (luckily they've come back), killed the grapevine and would have damaged a whole lot more if it hadn't been for a kind neighbor with some extra-large plastic planters she loaned us to place over all our flowering annuals and seedling veggies.

Anyway, the middle of June brings, finally, the first bean sprouts. It also marks the week when my cucumber seeds decided to germinate (after planting cukes 3 times). The lettuce is doing fabulously and we were able to have fresh salad from the first early planting a few days ago. The peas are really starting to grow, too. My tomatoes and peppers, however, look incredibly sad and therefore I bought a couple of established plants from Home Depot the other day and added a few pots to the south side of our house. I'm still crossing my fingers that we'll have some carrots - the first planting germinated quickly and look healthy, but subsequent plantings still haven't sprouted.

So, all you Northwesterners, thank God for the beautiful, green bounty he's blessed you with this growing season!

Still pretty sparse...

Finally some beans!

Beautiful lettuce.