Garden Guilt

The garden in early July.



In May TJ planted this beautiful garden. Then we came back in early July and he meticulously weeded it and pruned it and was generally very attentive to the garden. It showed great promise once he tended it. Then he left for a month and a half! He carelessly left me in charge of the garden!


The yummy celery crop!



It is now August and the garden is growing like crazy. I feel a huge responsibility to keep it weeded and to harvest the ripe produce. Let's make this perfectly clear, I am not a gardener, at least of the vegetable variety. I had to take pictures of everything in the garden and send them to TJ with questions like, "Is this a weed or a plant?" "What do I do to this?" "What is this mystery plant?" He proudly responded to my questions and told me to pull the weeds and harvest whatever was ripe. Once again, I am not a vegetable gardener but I did it anyway.


Cabbage



Now my job is to figure out what to cook with all of this produce. I have never eaten swiss chard. What do I do with it? I am not a big "greens" person, maybe with enough bacon and onions it will taste like....well... bacon and onions! I did make some delicious stuffed cabbage with the cabbage. Super sweet.
TJ is very good at making me do things that I normally would not do, without actually "making" me do them. I am a person with a great sense of responsibility and so I cannot just let the vegetables sit in the garden and go to waste or be taken over by weeds. So after each rain, dutiful Lisa goes out to the garden and pulls the weeds and checks the progress of the artichokes, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, chard, lettuce and the rest of the produce. I need a village to eat all of this! TJ plants like he is running a vegetable stand.

I got the ultimate compliment today though. My uncle asked who took care of the garden and I figure I have been the only caretaker for a month so it must be me and told him so. He said it looked great! So I will take temporary credit for the garden. The vision was all TJ!



This is more my type of gardening and my vision!