Yahoo! I galloped down and shot this image this morning before getting ready for work. Ain’t it purdy? These are our five raised beds freed, mostly, from pigweed and other distractions. You can practically see the food growing before your eyes!

On the left you can see some of our fruit trees, including the two apple trees that weren’t broken off by the snow last winter. We also have bush beans, squash, and asparagus coming up back there. All the trees are growing vigorously, but many of them are tiny short again. Next winter we’ll stake them.

Around the perimeter you can make out the deer fence, better than six feet high. We haven’t actually had any trouble with deer yet, though we frequently see them on the road. They don’t even touch Jessica’s flowers, which aren’t fenced at all. Go figure. Maybe they smell the dogs.

The tall stuff in the foreground is garlic, and you see peas and radishes coming up to the left. At the front of the second raised bed back you can see the row fabric that covers these warm-weather plants at night: peppers, cukes, I forget what all. Third row back is all tomatoes. The tall ones are cherry tomato starts from Wal-mart; the rest are regular tomatoes that Jessica started from seed in the house. Fourth row back is spinach that came up from last fall. We’re doing that again this year, because they come up as soon as the snow’s off. We’ve already had three meals out of that spinach, including in our duck-egg quiche, and we’re taking off the leaves as fast as they grow to keep it from bolting in the heat. Fifth row back is pigweed, interspersed with peas and lettuce. The composted manure we brought in was full of pigweed, which is supposed to be edible. It is–for the ducks and chickens.