How does your garden grow?

What's growing on in The Hill Family Garden (I couldn't resist!). This year our garden got off to a slow start. Usually I'm working the soil the second I can. I literally check the dates in the Farmers Almanac to find the earliest possible day that I can start. However, we've had so much going on (not to mention the horrible weather!), that we couldn't get the beds ready until the second week in June! Oh well. Hopefully the growing season will extend until Late September.

Here we have the Tomatoes, Green and Red Peppers and my little Japanese Eggplant:
Here we have the Cucumber patch. The big plants are Burpless, Japanese (are we sensing a theme here???), and Armenian. The seedlings are Armenian. Here we have my favorite bean, Dow Gak, AKA The Chinese yard long bean (I told you there's a theme!). They are so yummy! It's just like eating Asparagus. See those little plants that look like Audrey from "The Little Shop Of Horror"? Guess what they are? Artichokes! I can't wait to see how they turn out. When we went to Legoland, they had them growing all over. Such cool plants...

Of course you can't have a garden without the summer favorite zucchini.So last night while we were reading in bed, Bruce discovered an interesting holiday in his bike magazine. Apparently August 8th is National sneak a Zucchini on your neighbors porch day! What that has to do with biking I have no clue, but neighbors, consider yourselves warned! Get ready for your share of this delicious veggie! Growing alongside the "keeney" (as Emma calls it) is a Watermelon plant. I never have great luck with Watermelon. We'll see what happens this year. Next to that is Mesclun. It might be too hot for it. Maybe not....
Last year in the space behind my garden, I planted two different varieties of Raspberries, a Blackberry bush, a Grapevine and a Blueberry bush. The Raspberries died. I planted more Raspberries. They died too. I did some research and found that we have weird soil for them. I bought soil pep and another plant. Of course, they died as did everything else back there, or so I thought. This year as I was weeding, imagine my surprise when I found this little guy. It's a Blueberry bush! Maybe I'll try Raspberries again. In the mean time, I'm babying this one....

Here are my Hollyhocks. I transplanted these guys from the front (they're monstrous up there!), and I put them here by the "Starter Barn" as my friend Aimee calls it (so called because now we have a big barn!). I love Hollyhocks and never really knew what it was that drew me to them. Then one day, I found this picture from my Grandpa Wayment's garden. Like Grandfather, like Granddaughter...
Here's one of my gardening companions, Midnight. It never fails. The minute I walk out to the garden, I have Midnight and Maggie right on my tail. I'm happy for the company, but I think it's kind of funny how they always end up out with me.

Here is the Herb garden. Chives, Lemon Balm, Mint, French Tarragon, Greek Oregano, Lavender and Thyme are the perennials, and Dill, Basil and Cilantro are the annuals. We also have a huge Grape vine. Hopefully this year I'll actually make Grape juice!

I couldn't end this post without this cute picture. Today was our first trip to the Aquatic center this summer. Here's Emma and her buddy Grant. We had such a great time. Just the first of many this summer.....