Adventures in Gardening Part 1

On Monday, my husband, dad, brother, sister and I all got together to plant a vegetable garden (my mom would have been there too, but she was out of the country on a business trip). My brother and sister are moving into a new apartment in July, and their landlord is very nice and allowed them to plant in May, because planting in July would have been silly. We started with a trip to Home Depot where they bought a variety of plants, earth, and manure. Then we headed over to their new apartment.

To be honest, I was a bit discouraged when the landlord showed us the piece of land we had to work with. It seemed really hard and was full of rocks. We all worked together to turn the soil around and pull out the weeds that were there, and in less than an hour, we had something to work with! I pulled too hard on a root though, so I hurt my lower back, but I knew I'd be fine in a few days. Also, we found a few treasures (what looked like part of a teacup) while we were digging around, but thankfully no bones or other creepy things! At this point, the 'garden' looked like this:

Everybody working together!

We added some leaves that the landlord had kept since the fall to use as compost and we also added the earth and manure. The garden now looked like this: 

Kind of an inside joke

We then planted the various vegetables (and other things) my siblings had picked out. There was: green lettuce, reddish lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, raspberries (not pictured), chilli peppers, cucumber, pickling cucumbers and calla lilies. Here is the final product:

Watering the calla lilies

I am hoping to update the garden's progress during the summer and letting you know if it was successful!  Also, during this afternoon, we had the cutest little visitor! A baby squirrel that had not yet been corrupted by the big bad humans came up to us and even climbed on my dad! Here are a few videos. Enjoy the cuteness! 

Climbing on dad:

Eating nuts: