::How does our garden grow::

With a lot of TLC from my husband...that's how.

He's got green hands, not just thumbs.  And I love and am so thankful for his hard work.  

Our gardens have been an evolution to be sure.  You can see the progression here and here.

Seriously, he is amazing.  He built our vegetable garden this spring and has planted every seedling and seed that grows inside of it's four walls with our boy's help for a bit of it.

Climbing peas and beans at the perimeter, rows of carrots and beets, onions, lots of lettuce, and pretty much every other vegetable that we eat.  Growing there in the garden.  

It's pretty damn fantastic, if you ask me.

You see, every year in the past we have a deer problem with our gardens.  We call it a bed and breakfast, our little acre.

Every night the deer bed down in our perennial garden (below) and every morning they would take their fill of our growing vegetables in the vegetable garden.

Now that we have it fenced in though.  We will actually get to eat our own vegetables.  Without sharing them with those pesky deer.

I am sure that they are still sleeping in their beds in the perennial garden, but they are having to get their breakfast elsewhere.  Yay.

Speaking of our poor perennial garden.  It's the neglected child on our property this year.  It is overrun with raspberry thorns and mint.  Lots of wild weeds and grasses, ferns.

It's just past the point at this point.

Too much for my sweetie to tackle this year.  And with my back issues, I am unable to help with the labor of it.  The pulling, bending, tilling.  But we have made a pact to weed it out and till it completely this Fall.  Taking out our lovely peonies, phlox, bachelor buttons, lilies, and the likes.  A fresh start come next spring.

Or so we tell ourselves.

But even while the weeds threaten to strangle all of the color from our circle garden, there are the hearty stragglers that refuse to be taken over.  The lupines, the peonies, the bachelor buttons are all showing their colors.  Albeit in a lot less volume than previous years, but they are there.

And that makes me smile.

We went shopping on Labor day.  I was feeling a bit left out after seeing all of the beautiful work that my honey had done.  I asked if we had a few containers left that I could claim as my own.  We did, he said and I picked some of my favorites to fill them with.

He set me up at a non-straining height and I got to work.  Getting my hands dirty and filling the barrels with lots of fragrant goodness.

You see, while I love vegetables very much.  There is nothing quite as special as cutting fresh flowers from your land and filling little vases and jars with their lovely beauty around the house.

Now that I have shared the ongoings of my own little gardens, I encourage you all to go visit Ginny at her space for her Saturday Garden Journal.

Jealous doesn't seem to cover my feelings for her beautiful gardens.