My husband has been working his proverbial behind off on our garden this year, and he deserves a cookie, some kudos and a vacation. On a completely unrelated tangent, am I the only person that remembers the Kudos granola bars? When I was a kid, my mom used to buy the Price Club in L.A. out of Kudos bars, because she knew that they were a sure-fire afternoon snack for our eternally hungry household.

Hmmmm…Kudos….but I digress…

After realizing last year that we now live in an area of hard, compacted clay, my husband and I spent our Spring constructing raised vegetable beds, in hopes of transforming our new, urban surroundings into something that nurtured our inner farm-kids. I think we both felt drawn to the comforts and convenience of city life, but we still yearned for some of the creativity and self-sufficiency that we both experienced during our country upbringings. Since our new city home just happened to be situated on a double, corner lot, we were blessed to have plenty of room to goof around with…relatively speaking, of course.

We spent a considerable amount of time this Spring building the raised beds, and transforming them from empty shells to an actual garden.

Well, to be honest, my husband did the building, planting and caretaking, and I…supervised… but you get the idea. These vegetable beds were definitely more costly and time consuming than we initially anticipated, and after my husband moved approximately 200 wheelbarrows full of dirt with only his wits and a shovel, I think we both wondered if we should just abandon our urban, overly-optimistic homesteading vision. At the time, we had to constantly remind ourselves that the initial investment would result in years of culinary dividends.

Luckily for me, my husband is stubborn with a capital S. He has spent EVERY single day watering, weeding and babying our little garden, including my often neglected herb garden:

Long after the first few 100-degree days drove me into complete garden apathy, he’s still been spending his mornings and evenings ensuring that our early efforts continue to pay off. And Holy Cow, has it ever:

He’s picking veggies faster than I know what to do with them. Meanwhile, my youngest heathen continues to take credit for his eggplant seed selection:

As you can see, it’s a daily freak-show at my house. But a dang-tasty one…