Green Thumb Update

Apart from a few disturbingly hot days over the past few weeks, it has pretty much been raining. Constantly. Which is good news for our garden, and the really cool watering system Jason installed has pretty much gone unused so far. We've been harvesting herbs for the past few weeks (seriously, anyone need some basil? Oregano? Cilantro?), and tonight I made lemon-dill salmon with delicious fresh dill. We also got two strawberries tonight...mmm, so tasty.

So far everything is doing really well. I bought most of the tomato plants, but everything else has been grown from seeds this year! The lettuce, onions, and beans are all going strong, and the peas have already grown to the top of the little fence I bought them. Since you've been viewing our garden progress from the same angle each post, here's the latest look.

In addition to veggies, we've had some great flowers this year. I've posted most of the pictures on flickr at left. The tulips we brought back from Holland were gorgeous this spring, and I had three lilacs on the bush we planted last year. And our rose bower is billowing with light pink roses. In the middle of our yard we have a climbing rose over an archway that leads to...nowhere. It just sits there in the middle of the yard. When we first moved in, I wanted to pull it out, since it just seemed like a pointless, thorny mess. But last spring it burst into bloom, and even though it serves absolutely no purpose, for a week or two each May/June, it is amazing.

Our houes is full of roses now...and my fingers are thoroughly pricked (those babies are thorny!). We think that this was originally the gateway to the once-large backyard of this former farmhouse, which was turned into four separate lots about five years ago. The rose bush is really old, so it is not going anywhere, and it's a good memory of what our house used to be. There is no way we could have afforded this house if it had come with its former acreage, but I can't help but miss what isn't here and it makes me a little wistful when I think of what this place used to be.