Last week, in among the brutal heat, we managed to get two whole rows planted in our late garden.

It was the first time that we really had without a ton of cold and rain to get it started! So we planted pumpkins and a cool fast growing small cantaloupe. It’s supposed to mature in like 60 days! Small one pound sweet melons. And the pumpkins we planted were from our local bought pumpkins last Halloween. Three varieties… a small traditional orange round one, a white ghost pumpkin and a big, tall variety.

Our second row was beautiful rainbow Swiss chard from a reader, and rainbow beets as well as two kinds of cabbage!

Our rows are 50 feet long and I hope to get about 7 or 8 rows in this garden area. We are putting down spoiled straw between the rows as a hopeful weed barrier. And I hope too it will compost down and help to build up the area a bit. It was tilled once, but it’s still kind of lumpy and bumpy and all. I just couldn’t afford to have it tilled again, and it’s so low out there, I think I’m going to just do my best to do a no-till compost layered garden this year. I’m definintely overplanting a great deal, so what grows, grows!

Our neighbors wheat field is beautiful to behold. I can’t wait till it’s just a little higher and more finished! I just love the look of growing wheat! I hope he won’t mind if a snitch a few stalks when it’s golden! Just a few… I promise! I tried to grow wheat before, but it was just hard to do. So I’ll just have to admire his beautiful crop from afar.

I’ve been checking our garden every day now… even though it’s only been about 6 days and today… OH MY GOSH! The first row is up! I can’t belive it! Pumpkins and cantelopes!!!

They are so beautiful!!! I can’t wait till they are a little bigger and stronger. I plan to mulch them all out nicely and do my best to keep the weeds down to a low roar! I checked the second row carefully, but I don’t think anything has crested the surface yet. But it won’t be long, I don’t think!

Elsewhere in the yard… the fruit trees are setting fruit… little apples and pears I can see! And grapes and raspberries galore!

I have mapped out three large patches of raspberries and I am watching them very carefully. I want to make sure that we get our fair share of the little beauties and not just all the birds! I think there might be another big patch on the farm eastern boundary line… as there are many wild grape and roses over there. I think I might go and take a little stroll over there tomorrow and check it out. I love raspberries and can wait to make some jams and freeze a bunch of these from our own homestead!!!

I think this is called yarrow… but I need to get my good herb book out and make sure. There are all sorts of beautiful wildflowers coming up all over the place. I have let a lot of things go this year because I’m not sure what everything is! I know a lot of things are basically weeds, but then some are very beautiful weeds! Since I just don’t have the strength to try and recover every single flower bed area this year, I am trying diligently to just remove the very nasty weeds like the huge thistles and evil rhubarb and such like that, but groom the others to look like they are supposed to be growing in my yard! Haha… I have a lot of nice milkweed plants growing on the eastern side of the house and we already have a fair number of butterflies all about! A little natural habitat is just okay by me!

Well, I hope to have the rest of the rows planted this week. The weather is supposed to be lovely, low 80’s most of the week! Yeah! Spring is HERE!!!!