Project no-mow.

I do not like mowing the lawn. Ours is actually more of a weed and dandelion patch than it is grass, and requires considerably more care and attention than either of us want to give. And this is unfortunate, because we have quite a lot of it. So in conjunction with our gardening effort, we are aiming to get rid of as much of the lawn as possible- what we don't turn into vegetable and flower gardens will eventually get converted to no-mow turf or wildflowers... and yes, this will definitely be a long term project. We started last week by renting a "sod cutter" from our local hardware store. This machine quickly became my new best friend, and by the end of one afternoon a big chunk of the yard had evaporated. After putting down some fresh soil, Lisa got to work planting all the vegetables that have been growing in our house for the past 2 months. In this photo, she is working on squash, zucchini, cukes, and THIRTY SIX tomato plants (this is not a typo, the girl likes her 'maters). Our sod removal project continued up to and around the old pump house foundation. On this end of the new garden space, I put in raised beds (made from cedar slabs given to us by our local sawyer friend) and surrounded them with wood chip mulch. Then we planted them with every vegetable we could think of, and a few we've never heard of (anyone tried claytonia?).Yum.