Now that's a Garden!

I've got to get to work in my garden soon.

I keep looking out my kitchen window to a big mess

and thinking about what I want to do different this year.

This is only my second year having a garden

and we can just say that last year wasn't a huge success.

* one VERY large pumpkin

that hogged up all the room

* three watermelons

two were "past their prime" and the other was fairly anemic

* a handful of raspberries

that was a surprise - it was the first year we transplanted them

* a lot of great roma tomatoes

I used these for soup and we canned up and froze the rest

* several heads of lettuce

gobbled up by the birds before we could harvest anything

* beautiful fresh dill

this smelled SOOO GOOD!

* large stalks of corn

the sunlight wasn't great for most of the corn, we had a few tall stalks,

which I planned to use for fall decorating - but my baby came in mid October

and I was distracted and didn't cut them - the squirrels enjoyed the corn cobs

this winter, though!

Now isn't this lovely?

This is my aunt's garden and orchard in Montana.

She has about 60 acres and it is just absolutely amazing.

She works very, very hard to make all of this possible.

I love canning with her. She does everything, but when we are there it is time to do the pickles and carrots, and my sister does the jelly.

You should try her plum jelly. It's divine! We call it

"Plum Jelly by Mellie."

The first year they made it I kept calling it jam.

But that doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

Unless your name was Sam, then "Plum Jam by Sam" would work.

But it's not, so I was corrected, quite often, I would add. Ha Ha.

I always look forward to her huge raspberry patch. I love to go out and just stand there and eat and eat and eat. Then there are all of the desserts we make...My family loves rhubarb pie. I am only starting to like this. My grandmother made a delicious huckleberry/raspberry/rhubarb pie that was so yummy with vanilla ice cream.
My aunt also dries apples that we get at Christmas time.

I always look forward to all the good food!

I can only hope (and work hard) to get my garden anywhere near this...

I have to say it still feels like a chore, and not that much enjoyment yet.

Maybe that will come someday, but for now, where is that dang rototiller?