so the B family DOES have a garden this summer...

Even with all the choas around our house this summer (more on that later), we did decide to plant a garden!  The annual garden planting holiday in my family is always Memorial Day.  The frost is officially out of the frozen tundra yet there is still enough time to grow most garden variety plants and get a good harvest.  And this works well for us since S always has Memorial Day off!  Well, we did plant on Memorial Day, but I have no pictures.  So fast forward a month to these July 8 photos and I will give you a little garden tour...

Beans!  I went a little overboard and planted 3 big rows of beans.  And our ever present rhubarb plants which we enjoyed a lot of strawberry rhubarb sauce from this year.

3 roma tomatoes, 2 peppers (possibility of green, red or yellow...one died I didn't remember which one!), and a packet of morning glory flowers thrown under the windmill (which started climbing all on their own!)

butternut squash, zucchini, cantelope, watermelon

S got a new used mower last fall (our reel one couldn't handle the leaves on the ground), and it has a bagger, so for weed control, this year we are going with grass clippings.  And I will say after 2 layers, it is working splendidly!

We also picked strawberries this season too already.  I was hoping for the bounty of last year (30 jars of jam and 8-10 quarts frozen smashed ones), but it was not to be this year.  So goes life with farming though...it has been a tough spring and early summer for all farmers and our prayers and support are with them!  We headed out to our local berry farmer on July 4 (along with every other family in the city it seemed like!), and picked delicious yet raspberry sized small strawberries.  We picked for over an hour, but only got enough berries for a flat and a half.  We still had fun though! 

G thought we should all wear our sombreros (is it wrong to wear sombreros on July ? =), but only Dadda joined in on that one...

...and the novelty wore off fast and they switched to their sun hats soon enough.

2 1/2 hours of cleaning strawberries later, we had a wonderful berry fool to eat and 3 precious quarts of smashed strawberries to put in the freezer.

Well all the prayers of the farmers were heard and this July we have had some hot and incredibly humid weather!  Not good for pregnant ladies, but awesome for the fields and also for our garden. 

Look how much it grew in just 2 weeks!  Small fail from farm-girl, I totally planted my bean rows too close.

what the kids are most excited about in our garden...

... and one of the things I am most excited about in our garden!

Here's to a bountiful harvest for farmers on all scales!