Big Plans

This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada, which really is my favourite time of the year.  I love the cool temperatures, the fall foods, and the beautiful fall scenery.  We spent the weekend with family at the cottage, which was fun, but exhausting.  A two night stay with two children takes me a full day to get ready for and a full day to clean up afterwards!  Needless to say, this was not a relaxing weekend and I am looking forward to some time this week to accomplish things on my "to do" list.

My two biggest priorities this week are the baby's room and the garden.  In other years, we have had an amazing garden where I have rarely had to buy vegetables for at least three months out of the year.  My husband has built two gardens for me like this:  one at our old home and one at our current home.
 

The chicken wire in the fence is dug into the ground about a foot deep to prevent animals from digging under and stealing the goods.  We had big plans to add on to the garden this year, but with the new baby the garden suffered badly:

Yup.  Those are dandelions.  And other miscellaneous weeds.  I managed to plant the garden this spring, watered it once, and weeded it never.  As you can see, the results were terrible.  Not that it was unexpected.  About three weeks after planting, I gave up.  I just had no time to get out there to care for the garden, and there were so many blackflies and mosquitoes that I didn't want to bring the baby with me.  Even with this neglect, we grew enough green beans for one meal and a tomato here and there.

My plan this week is to pull all of these weeds out and have my husband till the soil so I can plant garlic bulbs before the snow flies - which means I have about a month or so in these parts.  I think I'm going to need some good gloves.  Next year we have plans to at least double this garden and set up a better watering system using rain barrels and some kind of pump.  I'll have fun in the snowy months planning what to plant and how to set up in the spring!