As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

Sunday afternoons are made for projects. In our house, most of the time Sunday afternoons are made for starting projects and not necessarily finishing them... but we do our best...

We have this little patch of land across the street from our house (to be honest, it's more "patch" than "land" really, since it's just a tiny piece) that has been a makeshift garden for the past few years. I cleared out the crappy shrubs and weeds a few years ago so we would have room to plant, and since then we've done our best. We've had everything under the sun planted there, but haven't really taken care of the garden, and by the end of the summer we always have a woven mat of dried weeds with only the heartiest of plants poking through. I will say one thing - we have the best spot on earth to grow rosemary. Plants have come and gone, but our rosemary plants (three tiny sprigs the from the first year) have grown into a wild and angry looking bush roughly the same size as a Smart Car but with a better crash test rating.

We've been lazy about it, but I still plant every year because I have a HUGE compost pile and the ground across the street is some of the most fertile I've ever seen. Really, it's like black gold. Every year I turn the soil and I feel like a farmer, flipping shovel after shovel of dirt black as night. So this year, we've decided to take a stand. We make our own jams, roll fresh pasta, roast our own coffee beans, cook every day and compost everything we can. We've cured our own olives, cured and smoked salmon... and damn it, we're gonna grow something if it kills us.

Today we started our first seeds inside - tomatoes, basil, eggplant, squash, peppers, etc. - and decided that we'll really make a go of it. This blog, of course, is the biggest motivator. These first pictures are our humble beginnings, and you'll see how it goes as the summer creeps by, one plant (or weed) at a time.