How does our garden grow?

The impressive corn, bean and sunflower patch. We're thinking of installing an ethanol refinery.

Tomato plants and marigolds.

View from the pond.

The bed of greens.

Strawberry bed. We just planted these this year, but they are already full of fruit.

The "hanging gardens".

Not too bad, thank you for asking, although we don't have any cockleshells in our garden. Catherine is the head gardener and landscaper in our household, so the garden layout and plant selection is pretty much hers. My contribution to the garden is essential if less glorious and consists primarily of "grunt" work. I can't even lay claim to doing all of the grunt work, as Catherine was the one who filled half of the raised beds with soil and compost once I got them built. (You'd think as a society we could come up with a more politically correct name for sweaty manual labor than grunt work, something like "tactile value-added activities". If you have any good suggestions, please share it in a comment.)

Last year we just threw some seeds and seedlings in the ground so we could say we had a garden and the results were mixed at best. The tomatoes and herbs did great; the corn was pathetic. In fairness, however, our time last year was pretty much consumed with getting the ground roto-tilled and the fence and arbor built. Actually growing anything was really just an afterthought. This year we have done better and so far the results are encouraging, for Vermont that is. We know that in most of the country gardeners are already on their third or fourth crop whereas we are still at the stage of oooing and aaahing over every flower that appears on the tomato plants. We'll really be excited when some tomatoes actually appear. Still, our strawberry plants are robust and full of berries, the greens are ready for harvest and the corn even shows promise. Heck, it's already 3 or 4 inches high! I promise photos as the harvest starts to come in.