JOY returneth and runneth over

Double JOY today! After three long, long hours of back breaking work, i finally have the veggie garden planted! when i sat down to rest my weary bones, it was at that EXACT moment i should've sat, because as i glanced at one of the beautiful new birdbaths hubby got me for mother's day (amongst a lot of other gifts as well), there at that precise moment was the Baltimore Oriole who has excited us the past several days, taking an enjoyable bath--splashing vigorously! we never have had this bird in our yard before, and as a matter of fact, i think i've only ever seen this species a couple rare times EVER! but never, ever in our backyard, so we are so thrilled for their visits!!!!

so, now i am amazed that i have 15 different plants in the garden. i hope they all take and produce for us. this time last year, after a much warmer spring, i already had things in for a month. but we have had a very cold and wet spring this year. so, as late as i'm planting, i DO hope i have a harvest before winter frost sets in!!

we also delayed planting this year because we were waiting for the results to be mailed back to us after we mailed a bag o'dirt (aka: fancy name would be soil sample, but bag o'dirt'll do). that took over 3 weeks for them to get back to us. we wondered if the results would've been: don't even THINK about planting veggies in THIS soil!!! but fortunately it wasn't all as bad as we expected. so with some remedies, everything is now planted and now the fretting begins over the weather. i don't know how serious farmers survive being at the mercy of the weather. in near drought situations you can always run up the water bill by hosing it, but in the rainy wet weather, you just have to watch as veggies turn soggy as they float to the surface. (well, okay, i exaggerate, but you get my point.)

i had little to no harvest last year and yet, completely defying that logic, we DOUBLED the size of the garden this year. i just cross my fingers when i do the math and hope that i don't get, let's see: two times nothing equals double nothing.

on the other hand, if the boost in the soil works, with double the size and twice as many varieties, i'm liable to have to build a corner stand and start my own veggie market. time will tell. i put in grape tomatoes, beefsteak and roma tomatoes, green bell peppers, yummy orange peppers (seriously, that's the name on their tag), banana peppers, eggplant (which hubby is hoping doesn't grow), cucumbers, watermelon, zucchini, green beans (2 rows of seeds sown), 3 kinds of onions, redskin potatoes, curly parsley and fern dill. what the heck am i gonna do with all that food?! what was i thinking!!

i have to say that it gave me a real warm-fuzzy feeling, especially being raised on a little dead-end street in the corner of a big city, to have "built" my own compost pile over the past 12 months. it makes me feel so productive to have that huge pile tilled into our otherwise insufficient soil. and to think of all that "mess" saved from going to the landfill. it's funny the little things that excite a person. especially when it's basically garbage i'm talking about.

but these are the things that brought me great JOY today. and when it comes on the very heels of a marvelous Mother's Day, it is even tallied as quadruple JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY! o happy day!