We’ve had a very cool summer here in Northern California. For the most part, it’s been in the 60s and (occasionally) 70s during the day, with the temperatures dropping down to the 50s at night. This is highly unusual. David absolutely hates it.

While it means we’ve rarely been overheated the last few months, we have had to bundle up every morning cause I refuse to turn on the heat (hello, it’s August!) and our garden is lush green, green, green…

with lots of stems, leaves, and flowers, but no harvest to speak of!

We’ve had 6 cherry tomatoes, all of which Miss Leyba has eaten, and ZERO of the other two types of tomatoes we planted. (They’re there, they’re maybe growing, but they’re not ripening.)

One strawberry consumed by, you guessed it, Miss Leyba.

One zucchini with more on the way.

And lots of cilantro (though it’s going to seed as I type this).

Usually we’d start planting our fall crop now, but instead we have no choice but to wait it out and hope for warmer weather to increase our crop. I tell you, our plants are teasing us right now!

So instead of ripping out our summer garden to plant those fall veggies, we decided to (once again) turn some of our lawn into a veggie bed.

More on that tomorrow…

Hey, Miss Leyba, what’s inside the cabbage?!

Look, it’s a wee little frog!

I love surprises like this out in the garden.

And, yes, these are the same cabbages that we planted back in November… they are finally ready to eat and enjoy!

Updated to add: Miss Leyba’s reaction? “Get it out! Tell it to go away from our cabbage!” Sigh.

We’re almost to August and you know what that means:

The bushes on our driveway are ripe with fruit.

Luckily, Miss Leyba loves blackberries.

And so do I.

Excuse us while we go eat a handful.

Yum.

We’ve been busy gardening over in Spritzer Leyba Land, but before I tell you about the work we’ve done in the garden this spring, let me show you some photos from last summer.

See those bushes behind Miss Leyba? Turns out, they only bloom for two weeks each year and there they are, blooming and lovely! A couple days later all the flowers died and the bush transformed into a giant, overgrown hedge that blocked a view of the stairs… a super no-no when your toddler loves to sit there.

So, last May David ripped out the bush (turned out to be mostly dead with just a little bit alive on top) and we started planting a lovely little garden. Here it is today with several plants just starting to bloom and lots on its way:

David also built me a small raised bed for our vegetable garden. Here he is last year watering our newly planted tomatoes (that performed poorly due to the abnormally cool 2009 summer):

And here it is now with lots of sugar snap peas, lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes:

We also removed the bushes next to the veggie bed (behind David in the above photo). One of them had super sharp thorns and grew poisonous orange berries in the fall. The other “bush” was a spiky Live Oak tree that would grow to be twenty feet tall; definitely not a good fit for the space. Yes, there was a gorgeous rose bush, bit it was very overgrown, so we thought it better to start afresh with something new. Here is that bed today, a very work-in-progress sort of photo:

Those giant cabbages are from our winter garden; they just started forming heads, finally.

And here’s a photo of our little girl and AVID gardener! Trust me, I couldn’t be more pleased. We love working out in the yard together and I’m loving it!

(My, what a difference a year makes!)

I’ll post more photos as the summer progresses. We so enjoy working on the yard and transforming this house into a home. So glad you all are following along!

Our winter garden is doing wonderfully. We’ve had warm, but not hot days (think 60s and 70s!) and cool, rainy evenings. The lettuce, cabbage, spinach, and kale are thriving.

Okay, the reason it’s really going so well is probably due more to the huge amount of composted manure we added to the garden and the thick layer of mulch we covered the top with. Plant food and a warm blanket are always a good thing in November.

Phew. Our summer crop, while plentiful in tomatoes, was otherwise quite sparse.

We’re glad to have a new season and a fresh start to our garden.

Grow, garden, grow!