A harvest!

At left is the produce I brought in today from my OWN garden.

I have to say, this is a huge, vast, amazing, spectacular improvement over what I did with my garden last year (er... one edible tomato).

Part of me doesn't even want to eat any of this; I want to frame it.

That cantaloupe? Is the size of my head.

And because I have NO idea how to determine a melon's ripeness, I kind of went by the fact that both the dogs made an absolute bee-line to the garden this afternoon when I let them out for a potty break after I got home from. They were both sniffing hungrily at this melon. They never go into the garden.

I took it as an omen.

I brought the melon inside, and Blaze absolutely would not stop following me around, trying to get to the melon.

So, uhm... I have to admit... I teared up a little bit after I cut open the cantaloupe. It WAS ripe. And beautiful. And I'm kind of humbled that I was a part of it. Planting, fretting, watering, transferring to the garden itself, weeding, fretting, more watering, fretting, encouraging (I might talk to my plants. What of it?), more fretting.

I cannot wait to expand my garden so that I can do more of the same.

I am sad, though- now that summer is drawing to a close, I have only one more melon to harvest and just a few more tomatoes. I wish I'd planted more.

I am, however, super-excited about having an autumn garden of broccoli and salad greens. This, coming from a girl who thought "stuff" only grew in the spring/summertime just a few months ago.