Garden Leaves

The vegetable garden is taking shape. The seedlings are doing well, and many of the seeds that we planted are sprouting. These are some of the leaves that we see right now.

Aubergine, or eggplant. I bought six of these seedlings from a grower at the outdoor market in Selles-sur-Cher.

Our figue, or fig, tree is getting bigger every year. There should be a small crop of figs this year.

Persil, or parsley, coming up from seeds I planted in the herb garden.

Sauge, or sage, grows like weeds in our garden. It just finished flowering for the season.

Tomates and poivrons (tomatoes and peppers) are doing well, too. We started the tomatoes from seeds and I bought the peppers from the same grower where I got the aubergines.

The courgettes and concombres (zucchini and cucumbers) have sprouted, as have some of the haricots verts (green beans) and gumbos (okra) that I planted. We're still waiting for the mustard greens - I don't know what they're called in French. I also planted a separate pumpkin patch with French potirons and American pumpkins, along with some winter squash called sucrine (kind of like butternut) and I noticed the first of those seeds is poking up this morning. Some of those seeds are old, so we'll see what comes up.

The garden is kind of late this year owing to the cool and wet month of May that we had. We should have started more seeds indoors. We could have planted in mid or late April, but you never know about frost in early May.

You can count on more updates and photos of the garden in coming weeks.