And so the cycle of gardening begins again. We pretty much garden year-round in Central Texas! Well, actually, it is year-round here. 

The boys and I just pulled up the fall/winter garden. We harvested a bunch of cabbage. It was fun to watch broccoli completely flower (it attracts so many bees!). We pulled out all the lettuce, as well. We left our artichoke plants (they seem to grow all year long!) and our Brussels sprouts. 

Henry pulled a lot of snails out of our garden and moved them to a better spot. During the process, he noticed, “Mama! The snails are mating!” Sure enough, they were. It’s so fun to

On Saturday we ripped up all the watermelon, cucumber, and tomato plants from our front-yard garden. It’s such a cathartic process to purge everything. 

We had a pretty good season. We didn’t stake our tomatoes well and bought the really sprawling kind, so those didn’t go as well as they could have. Our watermelon plants got aphids, but they continued to produce a ton of watermelons all summer long. Next year we’ll be more intentional about which kind of tomato plants we buy, and we’ll do some proactive organic stuff to head off the aphids. 

Last year, I was so spent from work that I had no energy for the