Veggie container gardening, take one

We've decided to grow more vegetables this year. Because we now have a deck, we've decided to do a lot of container gardening, in the hopes that less produce gets eaten by deer and sheep and slugs. We'll also do some traditional "in the earth" gardening as well.

The above picture shows the deck garden, as of today. It doesn't look like much now, but once those seeds get going, we should have a lot to harvest (fingers crossed). Some of the things we're growing: parsley, pole beans, cucumbers, mustard greens, romaine lettuce, bib lettuce, cress, spinach, and pictured below:
Peas! A definite Silas favorite. These are the only starts we've bought so far. I've also got eggplants and cayenne peppers starting in the greenhouse. We'll probably grow tomatoes in the greenhouse this year and will grow squash, potatoes, etc., in the ground. We already have an abundance of fruits growing on the property (plums, strawberries, raspberries, quinces, blackberries, apples, pears, Asian pears...). I can't wait for summer when we can pick so much food from the yard!

Wish us luck with our gardening endeavors. We are novices, to say the least.

Below are our first sprouts: crest. The spinach is coming up nicely as well. Hopefully, everything else will follow suit.

The outside room

Oh, hello there, Planet Silas readers! How are you? My name is Silas and I will be your guest blogger today.

How is it that these O's taste so much better simply because I am eating them outside? I do not know. I do know that I enjoy eating on the deck. It's really a lot of fun. In fact, the deck is my new favorite room!

But wait...there's more...
I have set my sites on becoming an expert carpenter. The deck is a perfect training ground.

Shannon taught me how to hammer things (my parents are so proud, even though they look a little nervous). I learned how to measure the railings from Daddy and have been practicing a lot.
See the slats that Daddy and Shannon added so that I can't fall through the side of the deck? That was thoughtful of them. It seems the big people around here are very keen on keeping me safe.

A baby's work is never done. Better get back to measuring these posts!
You wouldn't know it from these pictures, which contain only yours truly, but my Grandma and Papa are in town visiting! In fact, in the picture below, I'm staring right at them. And guess what? They both have cameras!
Anyways, I'm sure my mom will get around to posting some pictures of the grandfolks in a few days. Until then, you'll have to settle for me, me, and more me :)

All decked out

Five years after moving in, we finally have our deck!

This is how it looks from the front of the house. Our lovely kiwi vine is growing over the archway leading to the stairs and side lot.
It takes a lot longer than you might think to build a deck. I naively thought the workers would come and go in one long day. It was more like 4. But they did a great job and the deck is beautiful. We've sort of been waiting for this deck ever since we moved here in August of 03. We live in a century-old farmhouse which Shannon completely renovated prior to our arrival. She always envisioned a large deck on the side, but things kept coming up (a new roof, etc.) and the deck was put on the back-burner. Well, it was worth the wait. They just finished yesterday and we have already been enjoying it. Shannon plans on putting some kind of meshing up around the railing, at least temporarily, so that Silas doesn't decide to dive through the slats head first. We'll probably move one of the picnic tables up from another part of the yard so that we have a nice place to sit and eat. Such a nice addition to our living space!