WooHoo!

I just got all of my gardens planted (except the potatoes--and they hardly count!). This is the best garden yet (I am still in the "novice" stage of gardening, but I have finally made it out of the "newbie" stage!)!

I have two large raised beds, filled with my excellent home-made soil (which just wows me every time I work with it!), six small (tire sized) raised herb beds filled with the good soil, one small very raised bed (about 2 1/2 feet by 2 1/2 feet across, and 3 1/2 feet high--to try and keep the !@#$%^&*! ground-hogs out of the melons and cukes) and one "terraced garden" made from small containers (actually sections of 12" to 24" culvert pipe that MFG cut into 18" high chunks for me, which do make lovely mini-beds--plastic buckets with the bottoms cut out also work) which (sadly for it) is filled with our yucky, crappy clay soil (actually a load of topsoil that MFG dumped out of the back of the old dump truck he bought). In the potato and carrot beds, I amended the clay (spiffy gardening term for "mixed together") with the old, gross sand out of SmallDaughters sandbox--filled with pine-needles and wierd algae stuff from being wet and covered for months--definitely better in the garden!. Very heavy stuff, my arms are achy and tired.

Everything is planted with a companion marigold. Sadly, I am not very fond of marigolds, but they do keep the !@#$%^&*! ground-hogs, rabbits and deer from eating everything quite as quickly. I like them better than I used to.

ENVY ALERT! We got to go to the Greek Festival last night! There is a small Greek Orthodox church just down the block from my Dad's house, and each year on their Patron Saints day, they have a festival. We always love the tour of the sanctuary (LargeBoy whispered "I wish our church was this fancy!"), the dancing and THE FOOD! I trade off SmallDaughter and the WonderDog to my Aunt A, and take LargeCousinGirl with us(and bring bake lots of food for those who had to stay at home). All the food, and all the desserts are baked by the sweet ladies of the church. AAAHHH!