I have not really abandoned my garden but I'm sure it feels that way! Last week we went on vacation to the mountains and before that I had not really done much tending to the garden. It rained half the time and the other half it was super hot. Fortunately before we left, Mr. Randy used the tractor to plow(weed?) the garden and, wow. It looks great! At the least the first rows do. There is this section at the back corner of the garden that is the tomatoes and peppers where a lot of weeds have sprung up. I took a picture of the tomato patch before I started weeding it this morning. I think the weeds are the worst on this side because the part of the field that touches the garden had not been bush hogged at the time that I planted my seeds and plants. It was kind of the "wild side." Since then, it has been bush hogged twice but there was nothing to do about the weeds that had grown into the garden except pull them up by hand. Which I have now done once. This morning. haha! There is something really satisfying about weeding, too. It's definitely hard work, but the weeks seem to come up fairly easy. I just had to be sure to grip them at the base of the plant so I could pull up the roots, too.
Also, as I was going in, I took the clovers I collected to the chickens. I love giving them clovers, it's probably their favorite snack! I had been seeing glimpses of yellow/orange on my tomato plants in my mini-garden and I wanted to see how much longer I would have to wait for a lovely tomato. As I was taking some pictures of those not-quite-red tomatoes, I saw a bright red one! I was super excited and dug around in the green leaves and ended up finding four small red tomatoes! They are cherry tomatoes so they are supposed to be that size. I took them inside and washed them off then ate one. It was delicious. And sweet. Kind of like candy. I can just taste the bacon-tomato sandwiches that I am going to eat all summer!