homestead

i was very inspired this spring to plant vegetables, intending of course that sometime in the near future my husband and i would live solely off our land and its plentiful plentiful bounty. to start, at the farmers' market i bought one tomato plant and six lettuce heads and planted them in two tidy window boxes. every day i faithfully checked on and watered my plants when the soil was dry. i felt bold and naively decided to plant them in the flowerbeds directly in the ground soil, unprotected. i'm sad to report that of the one tomato plant and six lettuce heads, there is now no tomato plant and zero lettuce heads - i'm pretty certain it's a big critter as opposed to snails and small bugs because whatever it was straight plucked out the entire lettuce heads out of the bed, and it did this to the tomatoes:

{Mortal wound at the base of the stem- it's like someone took a bite out of my arm}

to protect the plant, my local hardware store guy suggested constructing an elaborate chicken wire cage but also conceded that it was a big to-do for my three dollar plant. he instead showed me a $1.50 tomato cage and suggested i drape saran wrap over it and poke slits to let it breathe. it worked for a little while but since it's been hot lately i think i ended up slowly suffocating the plant instead; not enough slits, not enough fresh air.

a little discouraged, i got a small zucchini plant to try. the woman at the market suggested putting a strawberry basket over the plant to protect against the plucking out wholesale from the soil:

{zucchini, caged}

this has proven effective in preventing the plucking but someone has still been snacking on its leaves. i've now re-purposed the saran wrap tomato cage for night times when the critter comes out, and pull up the plastic during the day to let it breathe. the first thing i do when i come home from work is check on the plant to see how it fared during the day and pull down the plastic. it's fairly involved. 

all this to say that growing food has not been easy for me and i heartily applaud all those who grow our food. i cheerfully ate the lettuce as it was growing but it certainly didn't produce enough for salad every night. the hardware store guy offhandedly remarked that tomatoes could be bought for 59 cents a pound, a little discouraging to the burgeoning homesteader. so, at this point i'm just growing to grow because it's really satisfying and calming. 

here are some pretty flowers to end with; 

{bon voyage flowers}

{peonies are so lush!}