My container garden this week!

Freshly watered as the sun began going down (I took this pic around 7:30).

My cucumber plant is trying to climb right on out! It's got several little vines curling all over the place, too. I ended up moving it away from the tomato plants because it was fixing to latch on.

I was checking the cucumber plant and I spotted this! Congratulations, it's a little... uh... cucumber!!

My garlic is finally growing! Yay!

I'm so impressed with how well my little garden is doing. If all continues to go well, the size of the garden will be increased next spring. I want to find some really deep containers to plant carrots and potatoes in. Maybe I'll try radishes and broccoli as well!

The weather is still yo-yoing around here. The past couple of days were ridiculously hot and we had smog advisories up, but that didn't stop me from talking super long walks that left me exhausted and dripping sweat. My MIL and I geocached the other evening and it started pouring down rain on us; by the time I had finished diving into the tree, getting scratched and my pants ripped before I finally extricated the lock & lock container, we were completely soaked through despite our umbrellas.

And guess what, today I have a cold.

But for REALLY GREAT NEWS, Trevor's finally gotten a job and started this evening at Dolce Camerata! It's a neat little cafe that opened up a few months back in Centerpoint Mall. The general manager is great and he and Trevor get along wonderfully. He's wanting to open another location soon and make Trevor manager of this one, and he wants to hire me to make a banner poster that he'll get printed! I'm not going to count chickens before they hatch, but I'm really, really excited for Trevor. He's so happy and stress-free right now, which in turn makes ME happy! :)

Mary

My Delightfully Contained Garden

I don't have much experience in growing things, except that things grown in Virginia's red clay-soil never fared well, even with the soil composted and such. Up here, our landlord's garden used to extend nearly up to the back porch, and he and his wife would sell the fresh, organic produce from their driveway; now it's just a tiny patch in the back with weary soil that hasn't gotten rotated or fed in years. My husband and his mom planted veggies in 2008, before I first came to Canada, and the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peppers, and zucchini did fabulously, but everything else either failed to grow or produced maybe one pitiful fruit.

So this year, I decided to try my own hand at gardening, but I was too lazy to turn up the untended plot in the back yard and get the soil treated and fed. So my MIL, Elisa, had the great idea to reclaim plastic containers and create a bucket garden! We punched holes in the bottoms, and I went to the farmers market and bought soil and lovely little plants.

I have two tomato plants, a cherry tomato climber, English cucumber, Spanish white onions, banana pepper, strawberry, lavender, Greek oregano, lemon balm, peppermint, and garlic.

I'll get snap peas if I can find a decent plant around here!

My banana pepper plant the other day. This baby pepper is now twice that length!

I like that my bucket garden is close to the house's side door, so I can pick up my watering can and tend to my plants without having to go far. We'll see how well they do!