My Mega Harvest....

... or something like that.

As I have mentioned before, I have only been gardening, and container gardening at that for 3 seasons. While I did garden with my mom as a young child my main job at that time was to push my thumb into the dirt to help plant nasturtium seeds and help pull weeds.  In fact, last year, I grew cucumbers for the first time and screamed in fear at seeing my first almost fully ready to go cucumber (silly I know but it was hiding behind the leaves, I swear!) 

Since we have been in our house a full year this year I had hoped that this would be "my year". I bought loads of seeds and started them in plenty of time even for our early spring but then we went on vacation and I managed to kill all of my seedlings with a lack of love (or not enough light in the room they were started in), despite a dear friend watering and loving them while we were gone. So I ended up buying plants and getting them into their potted homes later than I had wanted to. The only thing I feel like I did "right" (according to my own silly standards) this year was I bought some seed potatoes on a whim a month or so  back and planted them in laundry baskets and milk cartons and so far they look great! 

Between my late start, the drought that has forced me to water my wee garden with icky chlorinated city water, and the poor squirrels that keep eating all of my beautiful tomatoes, this has not in deed been "my year". My yields have been low or non-existent and I may be the only gardener in history to not get a single zucchini! 

However, always the optimist I harvested all of these beautiful herbs and a few jalapenos this past weekend with more that should be ready this coming week! I have a small and growing supply of herbs in the freezer and all of those jalapenos are destined for jalapeno cheddar sourdough bread, drying, and a wee bit of freezing. I have also been able to dry about a cup of lavender thus far this year! 

So, despite it being a rough year for my garden I am focusing on the beautiful and helpful things it is giving me and using this as a nudge to do my first very small fall garden! How are your garden's growing?!