This is my garden as seen from the driveway... for some reason I can't find a photo from the side right now.....this is what it lloked like last summer...late summer. I planted in raised beds. I don't know how I found the time to have such a beautiful garden last year, or else I got lucky, but it really grew and grew beautifully! I ran out of fresh carrots last month. I only planted 2 packets worth and never fussed over them, yet I produced enough carrots for the 2 of us to enjoy through March. Amazing really. We grow great carrots up here...the fall frost makes the Nantes one of the sweetest you'll have anywhere, they really get sugar-y in Alaska. In fact, our carrots are known for that ultra sweet taste up here. Potatoes too...we just ran out of good ones, they are starting to sprout too much now in storage, although we have managed to save our seed potatoes in the dairy room for this year's planting. I also just ran out of onions. I planted some red cabbage starts...you know, the little 4 packs from the store. Without anything special, I grew a red cabbage that weighed 16 pounds...yes, I weighed it, I thought maybe I should enter it in the fair for the heavy red cabbage weigh off, but I didn't - they don't give them back! And I couldn't see wasting a 16 pound red cabbage. Based on last year's entries tho, I would have won 3rd place...a few dollars. Well, it was worth more than a few dollars so it stayed home. HA! I bought and Rick planted raspberry canes... Boyne to be exact, an old favorite of mine. Some grew, some showed no life, but I'm hoping the roots all lived so that this year we'll have our first crop of red raspberries in years. We had a huge patch at our old house and I miss putting up raspberry preserves in the fall. I plant pansies and other flowers in the garden too, a garden should be pretty as well as functional in my opinion, so it's nice to see flowers smiling back at you when you're weeding or picking something to eat. Oh, the rock on the left is a huge piece of white marble..it came from one person to another then to yet another, and landed at our house. So it sits in the yard as company to the other boulders we've had to move on our land. Sitting here typing, I realize that I have green, yellow, and pink nails right now...I went out to the greenhouse where it was warm and hand painted my favorite fountain. My butterfly maiden is now 8 years old and she was once quite colorful but had faded to the point of being a very sad looking maiden. I found several 8 packs of pastel paints on sale at the store a few weeks ago and said ah-ha! Just what my fountain needed. So, this year it will be a little gaudy for my likes, but it will fade nicely in our long sunlight days of summer until it is soft and pretty again. With all the new colors applied, I'm sure our honey bees will flock to it for their daily drink again too. I've wanted to get that project done for a while, so it's a good feeling that she is done and ready to be put out for the warm weather, if it would just hurry up and arrive!
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