Our garden is looking like it will be a success again this year.  The edible plants are the only ones I can keep up with outside, and even there, it's hit or miss.  I was SO disappointed to wait, wait, and wait some more for my red raspberry plants to come up, only to realize they must have all died.  So, perhaps my opening sentence was a misnomer.  I kept telling Ryan that red raspberries must come up a little later than golden raspberries, because we saw them coming up.  I planted Raspberries precisely because you can't kill them.  And yet..................... I had to tell myself 10 times, "Jenn, it's ok, it was a learning experience", every times I would start thinking about how far I drove to get them, etc. 

On to happier topics.  The rest of our edible plants seem to have survived me.  Last night, we had my new favorite vegetable, beets.  Last year, I made chocolate cake with beets, and was amazed at their versatility.  Who knew, definitely not my kids.  They had not an inkling that buried within every bite of chocolate were juicy red beets.  So, I have been planting lots of beets in succession, so that I won't run out.  

Thanks to Bethany's instructions, we have been enjoying many, many salads with a simple salad dressing of salt, pepper, olive oil and fresh lemon juice.  Tonight, I made a 4th of July salad with blueberries, strawberries, feta, candied nuts, and mint leaves.  Everyone ate the salad because they were trying to discover my secret ingredient (mint).  

Our sweet peas as of a few weeks ago, now they are flowering and above the green posts.  We have enjoyed snacking on them, though I learned that Ryan doesn't like raw sweet peas.  We usually make an Asian beef and snow peas stir-fry that we all love.

Roasted beets and beet greens.  YUM!

We have all, every last one of us, enjoyed boxes of spinach for the last several months.  I feel rather like a radical acknowledging this, but I started putting spinach in fruit smoothies, took out the yogurt, and added ground flax seed.  Everyone loves the breakfast smoothies, and I am not exaggerating.  The great thing about spinach in smoothies is that it is tasteless.     My children love to drink it because the taste the yummy fruit, and we add a variety of fruits, depending on what we have:  frozen grapes, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, mango, pineapple, and so forth.  

We are excited for our harvest this summer.