Memorial Day

For Memorial Day and the week following, we took a trip to Florida to visit Mitch's family. Severe thunderstorms diverted our flight down to Florida, but we safely landed at Palm Beach International Airport a few hours later. We spent the first few days in Beverly Beach with Mitch's extended family. Next, we went to St. Augustine to see the lighthouse, fort, and historic St. George Street. We also visited Ron Jon, Grassy Waters Preserve, Monkey Jungle, and MacArthur Beach State Park. We had a wonderful time. You can check out pictures of our trip here.

Neil Stops By

In celebration of Victoria Day, Neil and three friends left the Commonwealth for a road trip to Boston. While their time here was limited, they were able to see many of the popular sites in Boston. On Saturday, they made a trip out to Fenway and met up with us at our garden. Sunday, we caught up with them at Harvard Square for a walk around Harvard University. We saw Harvard Yard, the JFK School of Government, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and enjoyed a tasty Thai meal at 9Tastes. It was great to see you, Neil. Hopefully next time it will be sooner than 3 years.

Planted

After three Saturdays of work, our garden is finally planted. The garden was rather neglected when we got it, so we spent the first Saturday removing all the weeds, organic matter, and trash. We spent the next Saturday building a fence around our plot to keep the vegetables in our garden and intruders out. The third Saturday we built up the beds, tilled the soil by hand, and planted. We planted tomato, pepper, cucumber, and eggplant plants as well as seeds for lettuce, spinach, carrots, summer squash, zucchini, peas, butternut squash, and marigolds. With some good weather and beginner's luck we hope to have an abundant harvest this summer.

A garden with a view

Its a bit of a fixer-upper, but its our very own piece of land to do whatever we want with. The plot is nearly the size of our apartment, and for the super low price of $30 a year, its the best deal on land the city of Boston has to offer. The land is part of the Emerald Necklace, a system of parks along the Muddy River designed by the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted. During World War II, the Fenway Victory Gardens were created to reduce pressure on the food supply brought on by the war. While gardens like these were quite common during the era, the one in Fenway is now the last continually operating victory garden in existence. The Fenway Garden Society maintains the area and accepts applications for new plots. We were lucky enough to get one this year, and as long as we maintain it we can keep it indefinately. Our plot is Z25 in the center section north. It is a quiet plot near the Muddy River with a great view of the Prudential Tower (tallest building in Boston, and 26th tallest in the US). We plan to plant: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, eggplant, summer squash, zuchinni, peppers, basil, cilantro, cantaloupe, and watermelon.