I went to the lovely community garden today to check on our plots, where I haven't been able to invest nearly the time and energy I would like.  But I was able to pick some beautiful, deep orange sun sugar tomatoes and pull up one square foot batch of garlic.  I planted a lot of garlic this year.  I love the stuff.  The garlic in my container garden stayed pretty small, but the garlic in our raised beds did pretty well... at least in comparison.  :) 

Our community garden is seriously awesome.  It even has chickens now!  Which means I can't stop at the garden anymore with the kiddos unless I'm ready to spend at least 5 minutes in the chicken coop.

Check out this sunflower.  It's 12 feet tall or I'm smurf.  I've heard that sunflowers draw up toxins from the soil, besides just providing yummy seeds.  But nothing is more impressive to me than the insane heights they reach. 

And here's the sad reality that is my watermelon vine... it had some blossoms last week, but I'm not holding out much hope at this point for fruit.  I just haven't been able to keep up with watering it.  I weeded last week with a vengeance, but they're all creeping back.  I'm wondering if it's too late to put down some newspaper and mulch...  my efforts at the community garden this year are rocky combination of honest, rookie effort and over-extended-mommy-doing-the-bare-minimum-to-grow-something.  Which means I probably won't make it over there with newspaper.  Or harvest a melon this year.  Did I mention that it was 110 degrees today?

Speaking of which, I'm going to try growing melons in the areas of my backyard where I had deemed the hours of sun inadequate.  In north Texas heat, a little shade (and backyard access for consistent watering's sake) might be just what the doctor ordered.

Poor little plant...