Things are coming up veggie around here.

I thought I'd give a little update on the community garden and my progress thus far as a gardener extraordinaire.  First, there has been a ton of updates to the garden in general.  We got two grants this year (that I wrote...go me!) that gave us over $6,000 to spend on garden improvements.  When you look at that combined with what our small group has given, worked on, and also everyone that has volunteered their services around the community, we have a pretty awesome garden going!

Look at this place!  Not too shabby for a small town (less than 4,500 residents).  The local high school wood shop class built the pergola and bench.  We have a few other benches under a shade tree near by that a member of our group built for us.  Then we have around 15 plots - all of which are growing all sorts of awesome things on them.  And...if you look real close you can see a shed in the background - we just built that and we plan to store our gardening tools, etc. in there.  We have more plans, including a compost barrel and fruit trees.

But, perhaps the most impressive (or more like shocking) part is that I'm actually growing things in my little plot too!  Look at the veggies I took home on Sunday...

The top row is a bunch of peas and the bottom row is from my gourmet bean mix.  So far it's mostly just producing green and yellow beans (with one lone purple bean) but it looked like there would be more purple beans to come.  These beans were super yummy last night for dinner, but the strangest thing happened when I steamed them - the purple bean lost it's color and turned green.  By the time they were all cooked I couldn't even tell which one was the purple one.  Strange...

No fear...it looks like more veggies are on their way!

Cherry tomatoes (I bought yellow cherry tomato and red cherry tomato plants...these are still green so who knows which they'll be)

Big boy tomatoes.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love tomatoes???  Mr. Jane's Girl (yeah, sorry Chris, that name is sticking) hates tomatoes, won't eat him.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  I was raised eating them whole though.  I serioulsy contemplated having a plot of just tomato plants, that's how much I love them.

Cucumber plants.  These are huge and have nearly taken over half of my plot.  There are blooms all over them which is a good sign. 

I also have carrots that look promising.  It was another gourment blend of orange, purple (crazy huh?) and white carrots.  I can't wait to try a purple carrot.  I was going to take a million more pictures of my garden, but I think everyone else there probably thinks I'm crazy.  Every time I go I spend half of my time watering and caring for my plants, and the other half of the time taking pictures while loudly exclaiming "oh my gosh, it's growing!"

The best part of my garden plot - I've convinced Mr. Jane's Girl that I have a green thumb (or at least haven't killed everything) so I think next year we'll put a raised garden bed in the backyard.  Yeah!  Go me!  :)