How Does Your Garden Grow?

After a cool, rainy week, we're again hopeful that spring is coming to Portland. We had a gorgeous Sunday of sun and 70 degree weather, and we spent the day working on our garden. Those of you who have been here know that our yard is beautifully landscaped, as the woman who lived here for 17 years before we bought the house was an avid gardener. She filled every square inch of the yard with trees, flowers, and bushes, as you can see here.


However, she never put her mark on one forgotten area of the property - the 25x5.5 foot space on the south side of the garage. We've spent the last few sunny weekend opportunities clearing that space of weeds and blackberries. Now it looks like this:


The spot gets full sun until about 4pm, and we're going to be quite ambitious and will be growing all sorts of delicious items from seeds, including several kinds of greens, onions, garlic, leeks, butternut and sweet meat squash, tomatoes, carrots, beets, pumpkins, cantaloupe, broccoli, cucumbers, beans, peas, fennel bulb, and artichokes. We're also transplanting several strawberry plants from the strip along the north driveway. Yum! Hopefully it will all fit! We got all artsy yesterday, as well, and made these stakes for our garden (lettering by yours truly and drawings by Thomas).


The kids had a blast hanging out in the yard all day. Here is Imogen being her cute, happy self.


And here is Elliot showing off the garden stakes, as well as sporting his new haircut. He and Papa went on an adventure to ride elevators and get haircuts on Saturday. Elliot sat still in the chair for the stylist for the entire time - a very big deal for him. We're proud parents!


And here are the kids and me in our sun hats taking a break from pulling weeds and looking for worms.


And remember the coyote I saw near Ikea? That was only a couple of miles away from our house, and we found out this weekend that there is a coyote and pup living in a yard around the corner from us. The yards on that part of the street are 200 feet deep and left partially wild, and the coyotes have made a den in the blackberry brambles. My guess is that they are eating the rats that are attracted to the fruit and nut trees in the area. Hopefully they'll stick to the varmints and leave the cats alone! Apparently coyotes are not so uncommon in Portland anymore, as you can read about here, and they are generally harmless to humans. As long as they don't eat our vegetables!