Bumper crop?

Not quite. But our garden has finally yielded produce!

Our back "yard" is really not much of a yard. Baltimore City backyards don't have grass, trees, etc. We have cement. But a lovely little cement patch it is! Especially after Mark constructed a raised garden for us this summer. Transporting heavy flagstones and importing dirt from Home Depot to our house was not fun, but after he put it all together, the finished product was quite cute! We weren't sure how much sunlight it would get, so we just planted a variety of veggies and hoped for the best - roma & cherry tomatoes, sweet & bell peppers, yellow squash, and 2 types of basil. This was our first attempt at gardening, so I'm not too surprised that we had a few casualties: the squash, romas, and a basil withered away. The other tomato plant grew very tall - much more so than I knew tomatoes were capable of - but gave us nothing. The pepper plants also grew pretty large and blocked all of the poor squash's light. (Note to self: plant them further apart next year!!) We also were NOT good about pruning, so we'd see lots of flowers and get all excited, but never saw any veggies :(

Anyhow, this fall, I continued watering the plants despite their fruitlessness, and lo and behold I noticed a tiny bell pepper lurking amongst all the leaves. I was so pumped!! Sadly, however, just days later the adorable little pepper fell off and I noticed a hole in it. I have no idea what insect would be eating my peppers?? But it's not all bad - Mark found an even bigger bell pepper and we also discovered some sweet peppers growing too. Here's hoping that they actually make it to the dinner table!