Isn't gardening amazing?

I've never really had a garden before, but Chickpea really wanted to become a farmer.  She may have been born in Jersey, but apparently she's a country girl at heart!  So we tore up a 50 square foot patch of grass and tried to squeeze in way too many plants.  So began Chickpea's "small-scale farm."

Yesterday, we had our first harvest: four beautiful, tasty-looking jalapenos!

Yummy!

I'm just as excited as Chickpea.  It's been so much fun watching the plants grow and produce fruit.  There are more peppers on the way and oodles of tomatoes.  We also planted watermelon and muskmelon plants.  We kind of ignored the spacing requirements for those, but apparently they really do need ten feet of space.  Those things are taking over!

I realized last night that I should be keeping a gardening journal of some kind, both as a scrapbook and as an idea file for future years.

I'd love to hear from those of you that garden!

Over the past few months, I've been thinking of trying to start a small herb garden on my windowsill.  Nothing major, just a few small pots.  I've never had much success with growing things.  (Go ahead.  Ask me about the Soybean Fiasco.)  In fact, one year, a flower in the container garden on our balcony bloomed while DangerBear was away on business, so I took a picture to prove that it actually happened: