Guys, I hit a landmark!!!!! The last post I wrote was my 100th published post! Yaaaaay!

And now, the garden. So when we parted last, I had fetched all the supplies I needed in Red Hook and dragged them home. I had the good fortune of starting my garden on one of the lovely 95+ degree days a few weeks ago. I’d love to tell you that the heat was therapeutic and inspirational, but it was not. It was disgusting. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that girls don’t sweat.

Above you’ll see my 3 cubic feet of organic potting soil, the container for the tomato plant with drainage holes I drilled myself (and yes, my drill is powered by AA batteries, and I love it), and the beast (Harry) demonstrating one way a tomato plant might use a tomato cage.

And that’s me (sweaty and gross)! Me and my garden! I would have loved to have shown you some pictures of the planting process, but as soon as my hands got dirty, the camera was abandoned. These things happen when you garden solo, I guess. You can’t quite see all the pots for the plants (but that’s ok because they’re not super beautiful or anything). You may notice (duh) that I didn’t plant seeds, but full-fledged plants. I started way too late in the growing season to start anything from seed. I also wanted to keep it pretty simple for my first little vegetable and herb garden (because I don’t know what I’m doing). The tall plant in the large container is an heirloom tomato plant of the Striped German variety. Sharing the container are two Lettuce Leaf basil plants. A third basil plant sits immediately in front, and to the left of that is a Tabasco pepper plant. All are organic.

So that’s my garden! Readers, garden–garden, readers. We’re all acquainted. Lovely. One of the most exciting moments of the gardening process so far: I already had my first bee! If you don’t know that much about gardens, bees are very exciting as they keep harmful insects away. I was standing up from finishing up the transplanting process, wiping the sweat from my brow and a bee came along and buzzed by each and every plant. Amazing. NATURE IS SO COOL.

The whole planting process happened two weeks ago. Would you like to see how it’s doing today? I’d be happy to show you!

Isn’t that SOOOOO COOL? Look how much it has grown! Guys. I love nature. Really. It’s amazing. Watching things grow is so fascinating. I have so much basil right now. I think I may need to do a big harvest today and make some pesto because I can hardly keep up.  I think there’s basil ice cream in the future, too. The basil plant in front is suffering a little. I expect it’s because it’s housed in a terra cotta pot (which pulls moisture away from the soil very quickly). My poor little pepper plant lost most of its leaves because we were away for the weekend and it was HOT here. But never fear! You can see a whole host of brand new baby leaves sprouting from the base of the stem.

I’m loving this whole gardening experience. I look forward to sharing more victorious moments in the future, and maybe some not so victorious ones, too.

We’re heading to Puerto Rico for a WEEK starting Saturday (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), so please pardon my absence. Hopefully I’ll have some beautiful images to share with you when we return.