Food Garden

For anyone who hasn't been following this story, Nusia and I have been working on a vegetable garden in our backyard for the past year. It's humble but ambitious. We grow a variety of different vegetables and lots of herbs, too. We've had plenty of dramatic failures, but they've made the minor successes that much sweeter. One of the best things about being new to this vegetable gardening thing is experiencing the recognition of a familiar food item—sweet pepper in this instance—that I've seen countless times in markets and refrigerators and on tables, but never as it grows on a plant. It's a simple thing, but quite powerful. The closeup image here shows the first recognizable pepper of six plants we're currently growing from seed (Purple Beauty is the type). Whether or not we'll see these all the way through to harvest time is still a large question mark, but we're enjoying them in a way right now.