Urban Farming

Yesterday evening, we started planting our garden. To give 外公 and 外婆 something more to do that just watch Julie, we all went out and bought some plants and seeds to plant in the backyard. And... Front yard. The previous owner left the flower beds full of perennials so 老婆 and I did very little in the garden last year. We mowed the lawn and pulled a few weeds but little else. Late in the year, Mom bought us a raspberry plant and blueberry bush. Those each appear to have survived the winter and, we hope, will provide us with a little fruit later this year. 外公 and 外婆 come from a small farming village and had a little garden behind the school so we thought they might enjoy some gardening here during the summer.

Last night's planting session turned out to be quite comical. If you ever view my pictures over on Flickr, you can view a picture of our latest batch of cookies where instructions weren't followed. This trend continued yesterday evening. I cannot say much since I don't enjoy gardening and didn't help very much. Still, I was out there, reading the instructions on the back of the seed packets and watching for space to be cleared and rows to be dug. From all the arguing going on in Chinese, I think 老婆 was also wondering about the rows. 外公 did most of the work and ended up planting the seeds the way he wanted.

The picture above is our front flower bed. You can see four plants were planted there but, what you cannot see are the seeds which have been randomly scattered by 外公. Onion seeds to be specific. I thought the garden was going to be confined to the backyard but it seems we'll have onions, tomatoes and bell peppers growing in our front yard. We do have rabbits in the area so we'll probably be thinking of some way to defend our plants soon. In the backyard are carrots, lettuce, green onions, a second blueberry bush, blackberries and pumpkins. The pumpkins were my idea but the location where they were planted was not. I hope I can provide pictures of pumpkins in the middle of the yard later this summer as the strip of garden where they were planted is not very wide.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how this all progresses. Random spots have been cleared and planted and not all the weeds have been pulled. I would like to add a second compost and some rain barrels to this whole backyard project. I'll keep posting as the garden develops. Just for the record, 外婆 was a school teacher and 外公 was a projectionist turned head of the village so no one here has much gardening experience.