Growing things in the garden

Cabbage seedlings.  Of course I'll have to thin them and transplant some.  It's much cheaper to start them from seed right in the garden rather than buy plants at a nursery.  Cabbage does well for me as long as I dust often with Sevin to keep the cabbage worms off.

Beets, already showing their red color.  Beets have never let me down as a garden crop:  insects don't bother them; rabbits don't eat them, because they are occupied with eating the lettuce and peas; they don't get blight.  In my next life, I want to be a beet farmer and live on borscht, pickled beets, and Harvard beets.

Radishes, a crop that lets me down often.  They usually refuse to become round.  I hate a stubborn, rebellious vegetable, and yet every year I try again.  Mainly because they reach maturity in about three weeks and I can pull them and forget them.  I don't even care much for the taste of radishes except maybe in a salad, but Cliff likes them.

Lettuce.  I planted leaf lettuce and head lettuce, but they look the same, so I only took a picture of the leaf lettuce.  

Spinach!  Just in case Popeye comes to visit.  

Sugar snap peas.  

Because I love the humiliation of a crop failure, I planted more radishes today.  Also a few carrots.  If I plant the entire contents of a package, I use the empty package to mark where the seeds stop.  

Lombardy Poplar trees are really nothing more than giant weeds, but they grow fast.  These are about four years old, and were only sticks when we planted them.  The purpose was to hide the monstrosity of a house next door, which is now vacant.  

The trouble is, there was a shed sitting where some of them were really needed.  Oh well.  We'll be getting rid of the poplars before long, and let the Norway Spruce trees in front of them take over.  The house still won't be hidden from view, but maybe somebody will buy it who will take care of it and plant grass in the yard (and not yell obscenities at one another at the top of their lungs).  

  Just to show you the sort of weeds Lombardy Poplars are, at this time of year you can cut switches off them, stick them in the ground, and they will take root, no tending necessary.  Cliff is thinking of planting some by a fence in the pasture, so he started these just in case.  If you would like a Lombardy Poplar, go find a tree growing near you and cut off some twigs.  Do it soon, though.  It only works in the spring.  And be aware that these trees will start dying at around the age of fifteen years.  
I decided to show you my garden now, before a drought or pests or blight destroy it.  This is probably the best it will ever look.