Got corn?

Indeed we do. We have planted corn, in a separate garden patch, inbetween two garden plots filled with rose bushes. The first garden we planted has green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, parsley, oregano and basil, as well as a few marigold plants and one strawberry plant that didn't fit into the strawberry pot on the back deck. The strawberry pot is getting filled with blooms, and some of the blooms have turned into green berries, and one of the berries is huge and beginning to ripen.

The first garden plot wasn't big enough to hold the corn plants, so we had to plant those by themselves. My husband is proud of that corn and has high hopes for it. He planted all the seeds in tiny peat-pots, and we've been watching its progress every day. Both of us like fresh corn, and we're hoping that each plant gives us perfectly sweet ears of corn. We're also hoping that the night-time wildlife doesn't begin helping themselves to our gardens.

The chickens have already walked among the young corn plants, and scratched in the mulch around the rose bushes. I have eggplant seeds in tiny cardboard cups on the side of the vegetable plot, and the chickens have walked straight across the struggling eggplants. I had saved those eggplant seeds from last year's Thai eggplant that we bought at a local farmer's market. I hoped the seeds would sprout..... they didn't. I hoped the chickens wouldn't disturb the little eggplant experiment.... they did. So unless our local Home Depot can get us some Thai eggplant starters, we won't be growing that this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the farmer's market will have that delicious green-skinned eggplant again this summer.

The grape vines growing along the fence in the backyard have blossomed with teeny-tiny clusters of the teeniest green grapes. Too cute for words, and we keep watching those blossoms now. Last year, my husband picked all the grape clusters, and we squeezed them through some kind of masher and had one large delicious glass of fresh grape juice. Totally delicious, but totally not enough grapes to reward us for all the water we gave those vines during last summer's extraordinary heat. We're hoping for less heat this summer, and more grapes.

As my cousin F would say-- Hope floats.