Small successes

After blogging about my epic failures in the last post, I'd pretty much ignored my garden for a week. Then came the weekend where I worked, and then a quick family excursion on Sunday. Monday it rained and rained. So today, Tuesday, I decided to venture out and check on things. I was NOT disappointed this time!

TOMATOES!  I have tomatoes!  

The nursery plants I bought are all in flower or have baby tomatoes.  You just know summer is coming when you see these beauties. 

 I can almost taste that fresh salsa now!

My second batch of seedlings are thriving, 

so far.

And my little "kitchen garden" closest to the house is doing very well.  Onions, garlic, spinach, chard, carrots, lettuce, and kale are really coming to life after the monsoon rains we received lately.

I am very excited over this Cara Cara orange tree I recently planted.  When I bought it from the nursery it was loaded with fruit.  I expected it to drop all of them when I transplanted it, but it has hung on to most of them.  I have about a dozen oranges on my little tree!

My lemon tree is doing very well, too.  There are several dozen lemons growing.  They say it's best to thin your fruit to one or two on a branch but I can't seem to do that.  I'm just so excited over LEMONS!

Seeds that were planted are now growing now that the weather is consistently warmer.  This is a candy roaster squash vine I'm training up some chicken wire.  The squash from these vines are going to make some awfully good "pumpkin" pies this fall.

And even my Chinese red noodle beans have sprouted.  I thought the seeds had rotted in the ground, but here they are!

But my biggest success of all are the first batch of seedlings that had stopped growing earlier in the season.  Seems all they needed was total neglect on my part!  A little more than half of them died, but the ones that survived are now appearing strong with new sets of leaves.

I'm very happy with these small successes in the garden, I'm hoping they continue.  Now I'm off to try to accomplish a BIG success in the garden.....getting these rotten boys to help me pull weeds!