I noticed that the beet leaves were looking discolored today. I seem to have quite a green thumb for pests… We’ve got leaf miners (according to the internet).

Jake and I squashed all the eggs we saw and I tore off the discolored parts of the leaves.

I wonder what I’ll find on the lettuce tomorrow….

Sarah’s been doing a great job of planting our garden, and our flowers and our delicious herbs and veggies are thriving.  However, in the contest of who can grow the most plants the fastest, I’m winning by a wide margin, and with a lot less effort, I might add.

Here’s where we started before I planted grass around the beds:

And one week after planting grass seeds:

Grow, little grasslings!

Then, after a week and a half:

Doing quite nicely…

And finally, after three weeks:

Look at all those plants!

I think Sarah might be winning in the edibles and flowers department, but I’m winning on sheer number of plants grown!

Veggie bed

Flower/herb bed

Hard to believe we started with this:

We’ve come a long way.

Unwelcome neighbor

We were having a great night, finally getting an invite from one of our neighbors to come over for a drink on their patio. I kept hearing scampering behind me and the neighbor’s friend seemed distracted… Turns out there were rats running along the top of the fence that runs between our yards! The neighbors’ fig tree seemed to be their destination. There were only 3, and they seemed to be relatively small. In the light of day we checked around our yard and did not see an obvious site for a rats’ nest. We’ll see what we discover when we dig out the back for landscaping. For now I’m just grateful that there is no evidence of rodents inside the house. Just to stay ahead of the game I’m re-reading Rats to remind myself what clever creatures we’re dealing with.

Unfortunately the pest discovery continued! I had been noticing a white butterfly taking a lot of interest in our kale the past couple of days, and there were some chewed up leaves.

After some quick internet research I realized I was dealing with cabbage worms. I inspected all the leaves and killed all the worms I saw, but the butterfly taunted me the whole day and was always quick enough to get away so I know this will be an ongoing battle. While I was looking for worms I found yet another infestation…

Aphids!

So while squashing worms I also sprayed the aphids with soapy water and knocked them off with the spray from the hose. The kale has been doing very well so I hope these pests will only be a minor setback now that I know they are there and will stay vigilant.

Taking care of aphids and worms.

I was working long hours at the Harborview ER and didn’t even notice the plants emerging 10 days in.

Little zinnia sprouts

Lettuce and beets

We were a little late to the game for planting this season after all the work it took to dig out the old weeds and put in new beds. I’m still learning about vegetable planting here in the Northwest, but with the help of some local resources I realized that we could still get some use out of the garden this season! We decided to start small and easy and use this first year to experiment. We went to the nursery and came back with basil, dill, cilantro, chive, thyme and kale starts as well as beet, carrot and lettuce seed and I got to planting!

Planning the layout.

Putting plants in took a fraction of the time as taking plants out!

All planted. Hopefully the seeds will sprout!

The front yard was not in great shape.  The bed next to the driveway was chock full of bluebells (which has come to be a dirty word around here), which actually have nice little flowers for a couple of weeks in the spring but are noxious weeds otherwise.  We also found them sprouting in the bed on the other side of the yard, and when we investigated we found that that previous owners had covered them with weedcloth and beauty bark to hide them.

So we decided to take this last weekend and have a go at cleaning things up.  The goal was to get rid of the weed cloth and dig up all the bluebells, and then dig up the bed next to the driveway completely and replace it with a couple of raised beds for gardening.  Before starting, the yard looked like this:

Look at all those pretty bluebells!

Weed protection cloth?

A close-up of the weed cloth situation

We started by pulling up the weed cloth and removing all the beauty bark, and then Sarah weeded and added new mulch (and did some maintenance on the rose bush).

Pulling up weed cloth

Removing beauty bark

Tending the rose bush

 Then we attacked the bed by the driveway.  We had to remove all the loose bricks lining it (the number of loose bricks we’ve purchased with this house boggles the mind), and then we removed half of the walk way to make eventual room for raised beds.

I have no idea what we’re going to do with these heavy concrete slabs.

Then we got to work digging out all the weeds.  We had the bricks and slabs out by about noon on Saturday, and it took us until Sunday night to dig through the entire bed and get all the bulbs out.

We removed two full wheelbarrows of bluebell bulbs.

That was hard!

Then I built two 4′ by 8′ frames of cedar 2-by-6’s and painstakingly leveled them.  We filled them with mulch and compost from City People’s Garden Store, and the end result came out pretty nice, I think!

Leveling the new beds

If the Prius was less capacious, maybe we’d spend less at the nursery.

Expensive dirt!

Our new raised beds, awaiting planting.

Although at first I thought we should get rid of the old stove in a favor of a modern one, it’s hard to find fault with an oven that can produce a beautiful souffle! After figuring out the quirks (and realizing that we did not have to move the cabinet every time we want to use the oven) it is working great. It will be even better once we get it leveled to avoid uneven cakes and brownies and we fix the thermostat.

Well risen cheese souffle

Sarah got me a pair of nice Lodge cast-iron mini-skillets for my birthday, so I made Dutch Babies (a Sprouse family breakfast tradition, served with powdered sugar and jam) for us on our cranky stove.

They were delicious!