My rediscovery of my garden is coming along slowly, but GREAT.  I am so excited every time I get done working out there with the progress I've made, and I just don't want to stop!  We got rained one day this weekend with an absolute downpour that you couldn't even see through, so that was disappointing, but I still managed to get a lot done.

Like I said, there is still A LOT more work to be done - especially as I'm doing everything by hand and not using the tiller this year, but look at my progress!  I'm getting plants spaced out and up on stakes now!!  Compare these to the ones from a couple of posts ago: 

I'm so excited, and I know it's going to be such a satisfying feeling to have done it and succeeded.  Some of my plants already have tiny green fruit on them already even!  

With the holiday, this work week is a short one so I hope to get lots and lots done with the extra time I'll have at home!! 

With everything we had going on this spring, and my level of tiredness with early pregnancy and all, we had come to the conclusion that we just weren't going to have a garden this year.  There just wasn't enough time to get it in the ground by Memorial Day (when the Amish farmers in our area advise having everything done) and so I was very, very sad.  We've done a vegetable garden the last 3 years and I have absolutely LOVED it.  I love my garden!!  I was absolutely heartbroken, but resigned.

Then one day a few weeks ago as I was walking past our overgrown garden bed (we hadn't tilled it under yet this year under the circumstances, so it was a beast) I noticed something growing up on it's own…. TOMATOES!!!!  This was right about the time of the big tomatoes with salmonella scare going on so when I saw those healthy tomato plants coming up, I was totally stoked.  I determined right then and there that I WOULD have garden this year.  It might be nothing more than tomatoes instead of the usual assortment and variety, but by golly, I was having my garden!!  I was having poison-free, organic, homegrown, heirloom tomatoes!!

To help you understand what an undertaking this is at this stage since we didn't till the bed in early spring, and now we have big healthy plants growing, take a look at this: 

It's not just that there are massive amounts of weeds to pull.  That would be easy enough.  The problem is that my beautiful tomato plants are buried within the weeds, so I can't go all Rambo in there and just rip everything up.  This is going to be a surgical procedure, and a very time consuming one!!

I spent about 2 hours working and weeding the first weekend after I determined to take my garden back and managed to clear this:  (nevermind Vin in his wacky outfit.  Our backyard is not viewable from the street and we have no neighbors, so we could pretty much prance naked back there and no one would be the wiser but the woodland animals and the mosquitoes.) 

This is going to be an ENORMOUS project, but it's going to be so satisfying and worth it.  Not only will I have accomplished something that means a lot to me, gives me great pleasure and gives me tomatoes to make into sauce and to can & freeze for winter, but it's excellent prenatal exercise as well.

I haven't gotten any younger since Vin was born, and with him being a very long, hard posterior labor & birth, I am determined to avoid bad positioning this time.  The kneeling and squatting while tending the garden will be great exercise to get this baby into the right position and to strengthen my legs and lower body for birth.  

Take a look.  Worth it in so many ways!!: 

Beautiful!!  I've gotten more cleared since taking this pictures from my first diving-in, but I haven't gotten the pictures taken of the progress yet.  More to come next weekend.  Hold off for me rain, I have tomatoes to save!! 

Well, half of the baby clown pants anyway. I took a little break from socks to get back to these because I hadn't worked on them in a while. Remember how the yarn I started these with was part of my old stash?  Well, I needed more (duh) and thankfully the same yarn is still available but……..  they've changed the yarn A LOT.  It used to have kind of a sheen and now it's dull.  It used to be more sleek and now it's more fuzzy.  Check it out: 

 You can totally see where the new yarn joins and it changes.  Oh well.  These are pretty darn garish, so it's doubtful they would ever be worn outside of the house anyway.  haha.  Clown pants indeed!!  I'm going to need a black onesie to offset the pants so they're doable, and they'll probably only be worn for Christmas day or something so the poor kid looks extra festive.

At any rate, I did finally finish one half of the pants.  Now onto side 2!