Since You Have Nothing Better to Do

Exactly 2 months ago, I planted my first garden.

I had (and still have) NO idea of what I'm doing but I do know that in New Zealand, veggies are on "auto-pilot".
I haven't done much in the past couple of months except for throw some compost around and hoe around...That's it.

Now I am in harvest mode.
Which is also stress mode.
How much lettuce did I plant and what am I going to do with all of it?
Why is the broccoli getting so big?
and my usual..."What the hell is that?"

What is even more embarrassing is me giving a tour of my garden to real gardeners. It is hilarious when they point out stuff that either a) I thought was a weed and was about to kill or pull up or b) show me something that I totally saw but didn't recognize.
I had a friend come over last week. She is a veggie gardener and knows her stuff. In fact, she was able to plant and maintain a garden in a small backyard in San Francisco! She comes to my house and says:

"That is an amazing artichoke plant you have there"
Me: "Where?!" I should have sounded cool, like I KNEW there was an artichoke plant in my garden but I didn't
Then she wanders off and shows me the strawberry plant that I thought was a weed that I had been hacking at just days earlier. Thank God the strawberry plant forgave me and thought I was ignorant cause it kept growing...and big.
I'm just not cut out for this "identification of plants" thing.

I totally didn't see it...

OMG! It is an artichoke!!!!

So I decided to give you a little update on my garden.
We harvested our first "crop" of mescalin lettuce from my garden and had salads....for days....it was a lot of lettuce and that's not all of it. I blame Bruce. I sent him out with the shears and asked him to "get some salad greens". He came back in with enough to feed eastern Europe.

My lettuce!!!!! I made that!!!

Can't let it go to waste so we had salads for lunch and dinner 2 nights in a row. I still have lettuce growing. I don't know what to do. We don't have any pests that are eating it and since the sun shines for about 100 hours a day, it is growing at an alarming rate.

This is lettuce...after harvest...I swear I cut it!

Oh and it rains, a lot. That doesn't help with the overgrowing thing.
I used to have a problem with killing innocent green things. Now they are laughing at me. I pull things up and they drop seeds and grow a foot overnight. The next day, I'm trying to figure out how that happened.
I have given up reading about gardening.
I don't know the best way to harvest lettuce or broccoli. I just pull stuff up or cut it with scissors. Whatever I'm doing, it seems to like it. It grows back, stronger and bigger.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with broccoli this big...

Looks like we are going to be eating good....for a while...

Oh, and since you have nothing better to do, I have a bunch of  "Before" and "After" shots of my garden
(Can you tell I'm a proud mama?)

Before...(actually about 4 weeks ago)

AFTER! Just add Water!!!

It was big before...but now...

More adventures gardening coming soon!!!