It's baaaack!

Hooray! After 12 months of waiting (okay, it was closer to 2, but it sure felt like 12!) we finally have our camera back! It even works and is just as pretty as it was when we bought it (1 month before it broke)! I have to say once again, buying the warranty/service plan was a stroke of genius on Brian's part. Sure, it was a little pricey, but we didn't pay a penny for this repair and we didn't have to go out and buy a new camera. I'm pretty happy about this.

Anyway, I've been dying to show you all what I've been doing all summer. Of course, there are no "before" pictures and the cool nights and grasshoppers are certainly taking their toll, but I'm still very proud of myself. So without further ado:

These are day lilies and other plants in front of our house. It took me about 2 and 1/2 hours to clear the weeds out of this bed. It was really stunning when the day lilies were blooming, the flower stalks stood up at least another foot above the greens.

This is our sumac family flower bed. The biggest tree was already here when we moved in, but all those babies have only been growing for about a year. I love my sumac mommy and her babies! The only problem is that we have to constantly cut down all the sumac babies that we don't want to keep. Better too many than too few, right?

This is a closer look at the flowers I planted in this bed. They're not doing well. I've also got a couple of really nice iris plants here. It took me about 6 hours to clear the weeds out of this bed.

This is my piece de resistance, my garden! The weeds are returning now, but it was gorgeous when I first finished weeding it! I spent probably ten to twelve hours weeding and hoeing, but we're really starting to "reap" the benefits now!

This is Kai demonstrating how ginormous our onions are.

Onions and peppers. I put Miracle Grow on the garden months ago and I can't believe some of our pepper plants. We have a couple of teeny plants that are loaded with peppers! I love Miracle Grow!

This is Kai with more peppers and eggplants. He wasn't terribly thrilled about standing in the garden with all the grasshoppers, hornets, and other creepy crawlies, but oh well. I wanted him in there to show the scale of these plants. The eggplants are huge! The tallest one comes up almost to Kai's chest! Our only surviving cucumber plant is also in the very back of this shot. We may actually even get a cucumber from it!

Finally, here's Kai among the beans. Aren't those lovely plants? Of course, you can't see all the grasshopper damage in this photo, thank goodness. Someday I'll get the bug killer out BEFORE those critters feast on my poor, defenseless garden!

So there you have it. I'm very pleased with myself for all my hard work, but I have to admit, I'll be glad when winter comes and I don't have to weed, hoe, mow, water and harvest anymore! Although then I'll have to shovel snow........ Sigh.