It's nice to have a garden...

... and a boyfriend with a green thumb.

One thing I never learned about as a silly city girl is the art of gardening, and the wonder of having fresh vegetables and herbs at your disposable. At the beginning of the summer, we planted three varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, beets, parsnips, and a whole array of fresh herbs (among other things), and we're finally starting to enjoy the fruits of our (his) labour.

As a descendant of farmers on both sides of the family, I guess it's pretty sad that it takes me tremendous effort to keep even the most low-maintenance house plants alive. But such is life.

Dinner was a freebie tonight... we just chopped up some tomatoes and herbs we picked from the garden, tossed them with linguine and gobbled it down with a dollop of ricotta. 

It was. SO. GOOD.

I mean, it makes me kind of mad. Because when I go to the grocery store to pick up these types of ingredients, I end up with watery tasteless tomatoes and herbs packaged in so much plastic. Would you believe that I never even really knew what a real tomato tasted like? That I actually thought that I didn't like tomatoes? The flavour in the stuff picked from the garden is nothing at all like what you buy, unless you go to a farmer's market - which I do sometimes, but I don't live close enough to do it regularly. Even the taste of our arugula is incomparable. I pulled a leaf off the plant and it had such a strong peppery flavour that it almost burned my tongue. In a good way, of course...

I have so many plans for the other things we have growing. SO. MANY. PLANS.

Can't wait for those beets to be ready.