The View From Here #2

Since I posted last week, the BFF, the dude and I have finished planting the rest of the veggies in the garden and we're now eagerly awaiting the harvest. Lettuce and swiss chard should be popping up and ready to go pretty soon.

The thing that amazes me most about growing a garden is how quickly the progress takes place. When we left for the weekend last weekend, our potato plants were quite small. When we got back Monday afternoon, our jaws dropped as just how huge they had gotten. I can literally see changes in the growth on a daily basis.

On Wednesday morning, I was outside looking around and I saw that 3 or 4 tiny bean plants were starting to sprout. When I went out Thursday afternoon to take some pictures, the entire row of beans was up and had grown a good inch! Amazing!

Strawberries

Onions

Peppers


Butternut Squash

Cucumber

Zucchini
Acorn SquashOops - looks like I didn't get any photos of the tomatoes or Okra.

When I posted last week, Jessica asked me how we keep critters away from our garden and prevent them from nibbling on our plants. I told her that we have never had trouble with having rabbits or other animals eat our plants and we always assumed it was because Nika kept all the critters away. Well, I shouldn't have spoken so soon because the next day, we went out to find a lot of our pepper and tomato plants had been chewed away!

We were quite surprised to find that a rabbit had been able to make its way that close to the garden without getting chased away by Nika, but it looks like it did. We're going to give these plants another week or so to see if they can bounce back and if not, we'll have to replace them and think about ways to keep the rabbits out.

As you can see from the photos, we desperately need to do some weeding out there. If the weather is nice, I plan to get out and take care of that on Saturday. The problem is that I don't like to weed until the plants are a bit bigger because I'm scared of accidentally pulling out veggies. Last year while I was weeding, I got a little carried away and accidentally dug up an entire row of carrots. The dude was not impressed. Oops. So, I guess I will just weed around the bigger plants and leave the rows that still have seedlings waiting to pop up until a little later when it becomes more obvious what are weeds and what are plants.

The other thing that has taken place around our little "farm" this week is that the Dude has spent a few hours working on the chicken coop and making it a little more, um, presentable. I don't have a great photo to show you how incredibly white trash horrible the coop was before, but this one gives you some idea.

And now it looks like this ...

Much better, don't you think?

Nika and Mr. Quacklewayne have had a few showdowns over the past week because the Dude usually let's the birds roam free while he's out and about working back there. The duck is certainly not afraid of Nika but it's possible that she might be somewhat afraid of him. I am going to try to catch one of their interactions on video to share with you. It's a hoot (or, um, a quack)!