Michael and Irma

The big news this weekend was in the backyard. Mike and Irma are having a garden together. Well, mostly Michael is having a garden. He's very excited about it.

He worked hard all afternoon digging up the soil and planting his 10 packages of bean seeds in a 3 x 8 foot patch. This week we taught him that a plastic leaf rake will not work on raking out soil. Fortunately we had an iron rake with which to demonstrate. I think next week a lesson in thinning will be in order but one guesses it will be a hard sell. He's already imagining eating the beans and is attached to the mere idea of the plants.

His transplanting left a little to be desired, (the basil and cilantro will be coming up in one big chunk) but the beauty of their spot is no matter what you do, it seems to grow. Morning sun is everything back there and they get a lot of it.

Meanwhile, my own little plot struggles to find the afternoon sun through the tree and never does as well as the others even though I work twice as hard at it. Still I found a heartening number of volunteers from last year's perennial experiments and have high hopes for the weekend's transplant operation since we just had the perfect rain to keep the little buggers happy.

We'll be photoblogging this as the summer progresses.