A couple of weeks ago I showed you my community garden and yesterday I showed you my front yard vegetable garden. But today I have for you, your gardens.
There won’t be a lot of writing with this post because it’s Friday and I really don’t feel like working, as most people feel on a Friday. I keep wandering outside to look at the Mouse Melons and the tomatoes in the front yard. I sweep a little, then swing on the porch but none of it is enjoyable because I know I have to come back in the house and finish my work. In fact, I’ve just spent the last 15 minutes staring at my screen, writing a sentence, then deleting it because it was so bad and boring. Then stare outside my office window and do it all over again. So yeah. This is the boring sentence that won. And yes. The other sentences were even more bad and boring.
So back to these vegetable gardens of ours and what one of them has done to me. One reader who sent in a photo sent in a picture of her garden in France. The south of France. Not the super-cool Provence type of area, but an actual rural area of France where I imagine things are still beautiful but not quite as quaint all the time. The kind of place I’d like to live. The kind of place I imagine a lot of us would like to live.
For a couple of years now I’ve been thinking about how great it would be to live in France for a year. A month isn’t long enough, that’s just a vacation. And 6 months … well it isn’t really living there if you don’t experience all the seasons and holidays. I even went so far to look up house exchanges on the Internet a few months ago. My main goal would be to learn to speak French fluidly. I wouldn’t speak a single word of English the minute my flight touched French earth. Unless I needed a Diet Coke and no one could understand me. Then I would speak English in the hopes someone would understand. So you know, like, a dire situation.
I pretty much brushed off the idea of moving myself and my blog to France because I have family here and chickens and cats and I know the layout of my grocery store so that I can get in and out with everything I need within seconds. Then Lindy sent me a photo of her in her garden in France and I got all flustered the way only something French can fluster you. So now that whole moving to France thought is in my head again.
I doubt I’ll do it. I don’t like change. On the other hand, I’ll probably do it because I love baguettes.
Please enjoy all the gardens, French and otherwise and thanks to everyone who took the time to send their photos (with a one sentence explanation of it) in.
Hi Karen – Minus the famous rhubarb, as well as a few other random things, all our veggies are in the driveway – otherwise they would be stealing precious flower real estate….I have recent photos on my computer, showing the massive growth change, but haven’t written the post yet….this is still technically one sentence, right? ~ Asshat Mindy
Hi Karen,
I’m growing different vegetables in simple sacks and containers in the back of our house.
Beet root, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes and more. And roses, of course!
It works very well and i dont’t have to cope with much slugs or other unwelcome animals.
Cheers Karin from Germany
Karin’s garden in Germany
Tina – aka Sideroad40
(thx for the Cubits suggestion – several plantings here from their seeds)
Tina’s garden in Grey County, Ontario, Canada.
Hi Karen,
I just love your blog! You are a woman after my own heart.
I just read your “tips and tricks for the garden” and you requested to email photos of gardens we are proud of.
I am extremely proud of my garden this year, not because I am new to gardening but because when I bought my house in 2011, the previous seller did not disclose there was a major flooding and drainage issue with my yard and the neighborhood. It took me 4 years going through the process of having a drain put in with the county. (I am making this sound simple but it has been a nightmare).
Anyway, I have not been able to have a garden under 3 feet of water, or during construction, lol.
Thank you for who you are and what you do in the world to make it a better place for the rest of us! Jillian
Jillian’s flooded yard in Michigan (I think)
Jillian’s fixed yard and most excellent (and dry) vegetable garden.
Hi Karen!
Here is my little slice of heaven. :)
(Photo taken on 4th of July.. Explains the flags.)
Take Good Care,
Ania
Ania’s patriotic garden in New Jersey.
My little salad garden consists of green peas (first time growing them, yay!), green onions, volunteer tomatoes (3 kinds), purslane (nutritious weed), and whatever else decides to come up. I planted some herb seeds so it’ll be a surprise! ~ Kim
Kim’s salad garden in Milwaukee
Karen – i thought I’d share my broccoli harvest. Gardening newbie. ~ kim
Kim’s broccoli harvest from somewhere people with giant hands live.
Gail’s very different pee harvest …
Karen – You know urine to gardening when you build an outhouse proximal to the garden in order to collect urine in a bucket, from donors with no active infections or medications, to add to the compost – this lends a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘harvesting the pees’! ~ Mother Hen
Gail’s green (and yellow) garden.
(Before you poo poo the pee pee, wanna learn more about peeing in your compost? http://www.nwedible.com/how-to-use-pee-in-your-garden/)
An in progress labor of love in Montana! ~ Kimberly
Kimberly’s shockingly beautiful garden.
Hey Karen
So glad you are posting action shots of the garden at last. Cabbage moth are the bane of my existence.
Like you I’m the world’s greatest recycler and scrounger; all my vegetable beds are lined with chestnut logs and the structures to help peas to climb and stop flopping are a chestnut grid. Home-made but very efficient.
Best wishes
Lindy
www.fruitfulresearch.com
Lindy’s garden in Southern France.
