garden update!

we have been able to make so many meals now that our garden is starting to explode!  and it really does look like a beautiful, green delicious explosion has taken over our backyard.  can you believe that just a little over a month ago our garden looked like this:

before

and now it looks like this!!

after!

the only sacrifice is that every time we go out to harvest, we get annihilated by mosquitoes, which is a small price to pay for the bounty of the garden gods.

just a few of the things we have made so far with our backyard harvests:

-pesto (obviously...we can't get enough of the stuff!)

it looks like someone else has been
enjoying the basil as much as we have!
who is this mystery nibbler?

-three bean salad with green beans from the garden, garbanzos and cannellini beans, garnished with slivers of basil leaves
-red new potato salad with parboiled green beans from the garden, red potatoes that have been boiled and cooled, thinly sliced red onion, rosemary from the garden, lemon juice, olive oil, and s + p.

things we are looking forward to by the end of july:
-ceviche with loads of cilantro from the backyard (i am also excited about growing our own parsley and cilantro so it won't go to waste when we have to buy a slimy bunch from the grocery store that goes bad in, like, three hours)

-grilled veggie kebabs (on our new grill..thanks, bruce and helene!  xo) with yellow squash and eggplant (on jordan's side)
-fried green tomatoes before the tomatoes start to all turn red

-swimming in a sea of tomatoes...caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes and backyard basil...roasted tomatoes with rosemary...maybe even taking a stab at making our own pasta sauce and canning it!

is your mouth watering yet?  because mine definitely is!!

best garden ever!

after the never-ending saga that went into renting a roto-tiller, we (and by "we", i mean jordan) tripled the size of our garden!  it meant sacrificing the bonfire spot, but our yard is big enough that we can find space for both!

yesterday was the first bountiful harvest of arugula.  i have never tasted arugula so yummy in my life!  the leaves are perfectly green, so delightful and peppery!

first arugula harvest

we had a couple of very disappointing experiences with grocery store arugula, coming home to find over half the leaves in the package to be wilted, slimy and sometimes black.  sorry, grocery store...we are going to do all our produce shopping in our backyard for the next few months.

so what's on the menu for this summer's garden?  basil basil basil (pesto for days!), lots of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, arugula, eggplant (which i will not be eating because of my "allergy"), and some other things that i can't remember because jordan isn't around to ask. :)

i am so looking forward to the summer meals we will be cooking with all of our backyard veggies!

giant garden!

come on young one, your time to grow is now

BAH-zill.