Somewhere among the knitting, doctoring, and parenting, I managed to grow a little garden in there too.

By little, I mean little.  In that little really grew.  I fully blame the cloudy weather we had in the early summer, as the majority of the veggies planted are in between our house and garage in a east-west direction, so they only get about 4 hours of real sun a day.  I refuse to blame my poor gardening skills and utter lack of knowledge.  Last sunny summer, this was enough to get a nice crop of cucumbers, but not this year.  I got most of my starts from a local woman who has a big sale on Mother’s day in her front yard, which in Denver is traditionally considered the first safe planting weekend.  (All y’all living in Zones 7 and higher who plant sometime in February can just kiss off)  All of these actually grew quite nicely, and the ones that I got from the greenhouse didn’t do as well.  Don’t ask about the sad little dill plant I got from Home Depot on an impulse buy. I did manage to get quite a few tomatoes from one plant, and some cucumbers and basil, and a few other things.

This beautiful little flower turned into…

A rather lovely eggplant.

In a fit of denial, I planted bell peppers again this year in the same spot, despite knowing full well that they don’t get enough sun.  This is what the pathetic little suckers looked like last week:

Yes, that is it.  That miniscule thing that looks like a green butt. Obviously, my dream of fresh-from-the-garden roasted red bell peppers will not happen this year. Do you want me to let you in on a little secret, though? Next year….I’m planting in the front yard. You heard me right–ripping out sod, putting in veggies instead.  Our neighbor just cut down the big cedar tree that used to shade and kill our grass, and now it just gets massive amounts of sun.  Furthermore, it’s elevated from the street level which cuts down on dogs and such wandering through and urinating on our future food.

I did have more success with flowers, though.  Check out some of the cool dahlias that grew:

Pretty, no?