My Little Patch of Earth

There are lots of things I love about being a home owner and being able to have a garden is right up at the top of that list.  This is what we started with earlier this spring:

 

 After lots and lots of weeding and a super father with a tiller, this is how our little garden was born:

We found the little fence behind our shed and it's perfect for keeping Ben and his smash-the-garden-like-Godzilla-in-Tokyo ways at bay.  He did kill one of my cucumber plants, but if that's all the damage this garden sustains, I'm doing pretty good.

A present left by the previous owners (besides the questionable cherry trees) are a few raspberry bushes.

These are the first berries I picked and yes, I was happy enough that I photographed them.

In fact, they're so tasty that even while we've been having really crummy weather, I still make ask David to go pick them for me to indulge my pregnancy cravings.

The man is a saint, as I took this picture from the dry indoors.

 Western Oregon's summer really hasn't arrived yet (I think we might have had two nice days in a row, a few times so far this year?  Maybe?) so nothing is growing fast right now with the exception of my lettuce.  Which makes sense because it is a cooler weather plant.  Or so says the almighty internet of knowledge.

We've totally gotten our money's worth ten times over with those six mixed-greens organic lettuce plants.  In fact I had to give some away because it was growing faster than we could eat it.  I was even putting it into the boys' veggie smoothies.

  

 This is was the garden looked like two weekends ago and this weekend.  I've got quite a few tiny zucchini plants coming on and maybe once the weather finally realizes that JULY SHOULD BE SUMMERTIME perhaps my tomatoes, cucumber and bell pepper plant will finally start doing something.  Our strawberry plants have produced a couple berries, but I wasn't expecting much of them this year.

As for the cherries, I'm still not sure what variety they are.  I'm thinking tree A is a Bing because the berries are getting sweeter and sweeter, but the interior flesh is still pale.  David keeps telling me I need to wait longer, but the birds are attacking the tree without mercy.  So I pretty much eat a handful every time I go outside in case that by the time they're deemed ripe, they're all wormy or pecked on.

 Tree B still eludes us.  The tree is LOADED with bright red fruit, but they still taste as nasty as ever.  Bitter and waxy.  Nothing touches these cherries, not birds or bugs as far as I can see.  People keep suggestion  pie cherries, but are pie cherries vile before you cook them with tons of sugar?

So that's how Lauren's garden grows.  I'm pleased with this first attempt and am already thinking of what I want to have more of or change up next year.  I'm also thinking to plant some flowers to bring in more good bees.  Wasps we have aplenty, but I haven't seen a lot of honeybees or bumblebees.  Any suggestions on bringing happy little pollinating bees into the garden?  Preferably easy plants since I don't have lots of patience for flowers.  I'm more of a "if I'm going to plant, water and weed you, you better give me something physical in return" type of gardener.