Remember all the gardening we’ve did at the beginning of the summer? Most of it, especially the beautiful new gardens in the backyard, have been overrun by a bumper crop of weeds. If there were awards given for growing crab grass, we would be a blue ribbon winning house as we’ve cultivated a few prime specimens.

One place we have had some success is in our vegetable garden, which we started this spring. Not every square bore fruit (or vegetables as the case may be), the carrots were not a success, the pea plants looked impressive but didn’t give us more than one meals worth of  peas, and the basil was victim of some little critter that got in when the gate was open. Steve saved the vegetables from a deer looking to turn the garden into it’s personal salad bar by shooing it out of our back yard – he says the deer looked a little upset.

The kids have really enjoyed watching the corn reach new heights as well as picking the tomatoes and cucumbers (which were pricklier than either of them expected). We’ve watched how the super aggressive zucchini, which hasn’t borne many squash, has wound it’s way through the tomatoes and around the corn stalks. We are all very excited about the prospect of our baby watermelons growing up into something we can slice up and share.

And today, we had garden grown tomatoes and cucumber with fresh mozzarella with dinner.

I’m happy to say that the garden has thrived despite my neglect –  I’m already planning what we will plant next year!