Garden Work Day!

Today I woke up early knowing I had a LOT of garden work ahead of me! I realized last week that I had been neglecting our garden. I love to dream up even more to do in our yard - I love to think about raising chickens, growing sweet corn (which Ben and I saw last night in someone's small side yard as we walked through the city!), and having a friends co-op style sharing group. But then I realize I still have a lot of work to do in our garden right now - summer gets so busy so quickly, and often weeding, cutting back, and harvesting are last on my to-do list.

So today I decided to follow one of my goals for the week: Do it now! and Live with Intention. My first two days of following the goals were not-so-successful. Both mornings I got on my computer right away with breakfast and got right back in to my Today Show routine. But today I was determined to stay the course! So I woke up early, didn't even touch my computer, ate breakfast on the back deck, made my garden to-do list, got my new favorite "work music", Colbie Calliat's new album, and got my supplies ready for the day! On my list of to-do's:
- Weed, weed, and keep weeding the garden! (Lots of this to do!)
- Transplant our squash and zucchini from the shady back plot of our yard to the sunny side space that is free.
- Research when to harvest onions (ours are not ready quite yet - from what I read, another 2 weeks should be right).
- Find a way to secure "rogue" tomato branches. Our plants have taken over the tomato stakes, the fence, and were even getting into our neighbors' yard!
- Clean up beer bottle caps (not from us!), broken glass, hot dogs bun wrappers (don't know how they got there!), and other miscellaneous items that make their way into our garden every couple days.

I was able to do all of these things so far today. I got great tomato twine ties to tie back all the enormous vines of our tomato plants. I also made a trip out to a garden center to buy a new porch railing box to plant mint in (ours has not been doing so hot) and a big porch pot to transplant our basil from the garden in to. I still need to run out to my favorite little greenhouse, Shenk's on Old Philadelphia Pike (their prices are incredible), to get more mint plants, another banana pepper plant, and some ferns to fill in empty spots in the shady part of our backyard.

All in all, although it was a hot and humid day to be out, it was very rewarding to finally keep up with our garden! We have such a bounty of cucumbers and tomatoes right now. I can't keep up with them, even while eating several tomatoes and at least one whole cucumber a day, just myself! It's time to make another batch of salsa, relish, or bruschetta! It felt so good to start the morning off with a joyful, productive feeling and feel like I earned my lunch!

A few pictures of today's work: