Nathan took the pretty photo yesterday morning.

A new statue near the kitchen garden gate.  I want to make a gazing pool in front of her.  Which I expect will then become another dog water bowl.

Ben and Maddie are keeping a raised garden bed planted with strawberry plants and flowers.  We’re not likely to see any berries, though, since M keeps picking the pretty white flowers.  B & M each have a garden gnome, really only bc I wanted garden gnomes.

Nasturtiums (Alaska) growing in one of my 4′x4′ beds.  I’m using live oak leaves for mulch.  If it’s good enough for Mother Nature, it’s good enough for me.

Baby herbs: bay laurel, lime-scented thyme, Cretan oregano, upright rosemary.  These are all plants I picked up for cheap at a recent Austin Herb Society seminar on making hydrosols.

Two agave weberi pups pulled from a plant at my first house in Austin, and an aloe that I’m trying to bring back after the cold weather.

Two of the 4′x4′s, planted with beets, chard, kale, marigolds and radishes.  Spearmint in that huge pot, which I salvaged from a neighbor’s bulk trash pile.  The spearmint froze during cold weather but is bouncing back nicely.

Garden gnomes.  This place is infested with them.

Keeping a garden makes me immensely happy.  It’s wonderful to have been here long enough to grow some things.

While I was weeding, we noticed that our dill plants are covered in these Black Swallowtail caterpillars right now:

Technically they’re pests, but we’re not eating much dill anyway, and Ben and I really enjoyed seeing them.  We looked at and talked about roly polies and ants while we were outside this morning, too.

I’m really going to miss our fledgling garden here when we move.

I don’t know that much about swallowtail caterpillars, but it seems likely that we’ll get to see them complete their life cycle before we turn the house over to new owners, and that somehow feels fitting.

Mommy’s Little Monster says you can plant your own Victory Garden, too!

This will be my first real attempt at a veggie garden, and some of my first gardening efforts here at the house in general, since when we moved in last May I was very pregnant, and it was really too late to start veggies anyway.

I’m thinking to build a raised bed on the north side of the backyard. The spot I have in mind gets plenty of sun, and it’s easily viewed from the kitchen windows. (Nathan likes to say that insanity is looking out your window and not being able to see food.) Wish me luck and a green thumb.