Still Life in Brown and Green

I hesitate to post these photos because they sure don't look like much, but this is the beginning of the garden this year. We planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, Napa cabbage, and Brussels sprouts over Mother's Day weekend.

If you squint just the right way and use your imagination, you'll see some turnips, chard, spinach, beans, and peas in this muddy expanse. Spring weather has been quite variable here -- first it was warm and dry and the peas and beans didn't germinate even when we were careful about watering, then we had ten days of cold and rain so the seeds just rotted in the ground. They've all been replanted, so fingers crossed!

We had lots of extra plants that I had started from seed, so we planted our "offsite" garden at my mother-in-law's with more tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, and watermelons.

Five varieties of tomatoes are planted, caged, and mulched.

I have a little bit of space for flowers within the fenced vegetable garden and I'm especially excited that my columbines seem to be doing well. I started them in pots from seeds last summer (wrong time, they're meant to be sown directly in the fall) and they weren't ready to plant outside last year. These are small and also don't look like much now, but they have grown, and I have even more that I started from seed to plant outside.

These bits of green in muddy brown soil are underwhelming now, but I'm thinking of them as the "Before" photos to compare with the hopefully more impressive and verdant "After" pictures in a month or two.