Daily dose of summer goodness

We've been harvesting raspberries from our garden. The picture above is today's crop. As our raspberry bush has grown so much this year, I was hoping that, maybe, possibly, I could make some jam out of our own raspberries, but the chances are very slim. Every time I come in with bowl full of raspberries, they disappear. Our super picky eater M loves them. Yup. That good.

Sprout!

I did it! The first time!! Alfalfa sprouts!!! They are growing in my kitchen. I've always wanted to try. Then a few days ago, I decided to give a try. It was easier than I thought. Sprout People website has very clear instruction and that's what I followed. Only 2 Tbsp of seeds became this beautiful quart jar full of sprouts! We haven't tasted yet, but I think we will have some tonight.

Backyard Jungle

My backyard vegetable garden looked like this a few weeks ago....

Now, it looks like this....

Tomato Jungle!! And I'm loving it!
My first trial of cantaloupe plants have a lot of flowers.

Beautiful Peas!

First harvest

Just cute, aren't they? Oh, they were so yummy, too!

Sweaty Saturday

It has become our family tradition to work on our vegetable garden every Memorial Day weekend. This year, I'm trying something new. Instead of not-so-organized farmer style in a very small yard, I will try French Intensive Garden style. It's more known as a square-foot-garden. But I'm not a kind of girl who follows direction precisely (ahem, maybe that's my problem...), so, of course I'm making some adjustment. The bottom line is that I want to maximize yields from our small some 12'x14' section of our backyard. I simply want to do the best I could.
Growing up, I watched both of my grandmothers growing vegetable gardens, serious ones. One was on terrace, and other in her small backyard. Both of them had many many kinds of vegetables and flowers. And my mom, who has big fat Green Thumbs (well, not literally, but she has dozens of orchid which I hear is very difficult to take care of), has her own vegetable garden in her small backyard as well. One year, her tomato plants were taller than my mom!
So, I want to have a good variety of vegetables growing in my garden, but yet looks organized and tidy and easy on eyes - something like this.

Image borrowed from http://localfoodsandusky.wordpress.com/

We worked almost all day today digging, tilling, measuring, and cutting, but something about having 3 small children, we ran out of time. So no picture yet. But one raised bed looks pretty good as it is now. I can't wait!