Productive afternoon.

We dug in the dirt today! We stopped at Lowe's on the way home from church and stacked a flat bed cart high with eight bags of soil and three bags of manure! We also bought lots of plants. I told the boys they could each pick an experimental plant...Seth chose this artichoke...

Doesn't it look like a weed? We LOVE artichokes...so I hope it does well. I'm thinking that one plant wont yield many artichokes, but I'm not positive. So we'll give it a try and see what happens!

I chose this eggplant as my experimental.

Truthfully, I'm not crazy about eggplant. I've had it twice. And twice I think the people that prepared it for me overcooked it. I'm wondering if it won't be good roasted in olive oil and butter...caramelized on the outside and tender on the inside? I'm going to give it a try.

Plus, look how pretty it is! I can't wait to see purple in the garden!

Ian wanted strawberries as his choice...not necessarily an experimental...but that's what he wanted.

Unfortunately, they didn't have any. So he chose watermelon instead! That's OK by us...we LOVE watermelon.

I hope we left it enough room to spread out. We'll see. I have a feeling this whole garden is going to be experimental! We're on a learning curve here...

As far as the strawberries? I'm going to find some during the week and plant them in the barrel with the lemon tree. Ian will be excited about that.

And for the rest of the garden? The usual garden culprits...

Cucumbers...

We got this Burpless cucumber...

...as well as a Lemon Cucumber (which I believe is Heirloom as well...so we can save some of those seeds, too!) and some sort of Japanese cucumber. It's similar to the Armenian, but the skin isn't as smooth. It was Chris' pick!

Then of course, peppers.

Sweet banana peppers...

...to slice and pickle for sandwiches.

Jalapenos...

...for salsa and maybe even some pepper jelly!

And Anaheims....

..for roasting and adding to paninis and burgers. Yum!

Then there's the tomatoes...

This one is an heirloom...Mr. Stripey. We're going to try our hand at saving seeds for next year. We also got Sweet 100's, yellow pears and Early Girl. We should be good in the tomato department. Not to mention, I have them in a much sunnier spot this year so I'm thinking they're going to produce for us. I hope!

And we can't forget zucchini. We love zucchini.

So we got four plants! You can do so much with it...fried zucchini, zucchini cakes, sauteed zucchini, grilled zucchini on skewers, zucchini bread (do I sound like Bubba Gump?)...oh yeah...we need lots of this stuff.

I am so excited...and relieved...to finally have some food planted. I was getting a bit stressed because time was flying by. But we got a lot accomplished today...thanks so much to my helpful family. They really helped a LOT. They mixed soil and manure, filled raised beds, repaired tomato cages, fixed hoses and spigot fittings...it was great to have them out there with me.

The only thing left to do is to plant some seeds. I have lettuce, radish, carrots, kale, peas and beans. Then of course the nasturtiums and Sweet Peas....they smell so wonderful. As a matter of fact...I may go out and plant now. The sun is down and it's cooling off...this would be a great time to get some more work done! I think I will...