Yarn? No. Garden? Yes.

My fiber time for the last several days has been sacrificed to the garden gods.  I love having a pretty yard, and I love having my own homegrown fresh fruits & vegetables, so I understand the necessary trade-off between yarn and garden time.  My fingers are getting antsy for fiber, though, so I know I will make sure to do something with yarn this week to appease them. 

But if I couldn't play with fiber this past weekend, at least I got to play in the dirt. 

In one corner of the yard, we have our perennial garden where the grapevines are flourishing on the arbor.  The vines are loaded with baby bunches of grapes and I will have more than enough to make homemade grape jelly this year.  Behind the arbor, the sour cherry tree is also bulging with fruit that is just starting to blush with red. 

I'm particularly pleased with the windowboxes on the shed this year.  My husband and I picked out different purple, magenta & white flowers for them:

On the other side of the yard is the vegetable garden.  The perennials that border the garden space are doing very well - the strawberry patch is happy, the rhubarb is huge, the mint is growing like weeds, and the raspberry canes have the best crop of berries started on them that we've had in years.  Apparently they appreciated the wet spring more than I did.  Of course they didn't have to constantly wipe mud from dog paws for weeks on end, either.

The vegetable garden is planted!  This always feels like the biggest accomplishment of early summer.  This year's line-up:  hot peppers, turnips, radishes, green beans, zucchini, sweet corn, onions, 6 different kinds of tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkins, basil, & parsley.  Summer should be very, very tasty. 

It doesn't look all that spectacular now, but give it a couple of months and it will be a jungle of vegetable plants.  It will be fun to have before & after photos to compare between planting weekend and the beginning of harvesting.  Also, that black plastic-looking material on the garden?  It's not very attractive, but it is wonderful stuff.  It's a biodegradeable material that will prevent weeds and help the plants retain moisture.  I won't have to spend hardly any time at all on weeding... and you know that means more time for spinning & knitting!

My husband's rose garden is growing beautifully this year. The roses loved the mild winter and wet spring, too:

 

Lastly, I potted the thyme and rosemary this year, instead of putting them in the garden.  I plan to bring them indoors for the winter, so I can continue to enjoy using fresh herbs in the kitchen when it's cold and snowy outside: