Patience is rewarding, and other lessons from my garden

When we moved here 3 years ago I decided I wanted to have an asparagus bed. Aspargus is a delicious early-harvest veggie, the first usually to be ready in the spring. The draw back? Asparagus crowns have to grow and establish for 3 years before you harvest them. I bought 2 year old crowns in 2009, our first Spring here. I planted them then, and for the next two years tended them, allowing them to establish themselves deeply in the bed I laid out for them. This year they are FINALLY mature enough for some harvesting! Yay! We got the first of the harvest today, and ate it with some quinoa in a lemon-garlic-cream sauce. Asparagus that fresh is just absolutely divine.





(another lesson unrelated to gardening? If you want the Christmas lights down, you got to do it yourself.)


This weekend we did a lot of clean up on the pile of sticks occupying our driveway, and I decided it was high time we had a firepit, so while the men folk gathered up sticks for the yardwaste, I dug a pit and lined it with some bricks we had. It is like a little Stonehenge. Jude really enjoyed helping me. Searching the soil for rocks was fun, but TASTING the soil was even better!


The fruits of my labor:

In Elyas' mind, a fire must be to toast *something*, so he stuck a cracker on a stick and had at it.

Ali and Jude stare at the fire. Timeless.