Gardening without Jinx around still hurts my heart, though the gardening itself heals me. Last year was the first full summer without Jinx around to help his garden grow. The garden didn't grow particularly well, and some might say it was the weather; but, I know it was because I didn't have Jinx looking after it. I did have Yoshi trampling it, and peeing on it. But the coocumbers and tomatoes just didn't prosper as they had in the past.A lot of changes happened last summer, one of which was the tearing down of our cabanon (shed) and creating way more space in the yard. The idea I had last year was to move the garden space this year, but we got a very late start (read: this past week) due to weather, and my taking a 6-week class for my publishing certificate which pretty much took up all my weekends between the beginning of May until mid-June.Shawn also wanted to be part of the gardening process this year, so he's been helping me dig and move stuff around. We moved the garden to the far corner of the yard. It's a better place for it I think. Also I should have to deal with way fewer spiders the size of my head to get to the plants. THANK GOODNESS!We only planted our plants this weekend. I'm about a month behind where I normally am. Other people have gardens that are already sprouting tomatoes and whatnot, but I just have my little sprouts.Although, one thing I noticed about 2 weeks ago were the sudden appearance of rogue tomato plants amongst the weeds where the garden USED to be.Look carefully amongst the weeds - do you see all those tiny tomato plants? And MINT! So. Much. Mint. Aside from this area being where the garden WAS, we also dump all our pots of plants and herbs there at the end of the season. I guess the ground has been fertilized enough that these things are starting to grow on their own. I repotted 8 different sprouts, and there are still some in the weeds!I gave three plants to my neighbour, and replanted four others in the garden. One of the little sprouts didn't like being dug up and didn't make it, but that's ok. I'm the only one in this house (besides Sophie) who eats tomatoes. I don't know what I would do with 15 or so cherry tomato plants! I am fairly certain that they are all cherry tomatoes because I tend to grow those more often than regular ones. Who knows what will happen though. I might have to set up a tomato stand at the end of my driveway by the end of the summer and sell tomatoes - assuming these all grow and bear fruit!Now we've got the garden pretty much finished. We have coocumbers (right), yellow watermelon (left - and who knows if that will work. Shawn picked that one out!), and four tomato plants in the middle. I still have to plant my radish seeds, and I'll get to that this week (because: vacation for meeeee!!). I have my little herb bucket again with lemon mint, lemon thyme, and lavender. I replanted a lot of the mint that was growing amongst the weeds, and it seems to be doing well. We're thinking of adding some pots of flowers around the back of the garden, over the cedar chips. And I need to add a little fencing, or some sort of border to the front and sides of the garden (to keep Mr Bear Paws OUT of the garden. Sigh. YOSHI!!)Another thing different this year is my attempt at adding flowers to the back yard, too.About 3 weeks ago I tossed (sort of planted) a bunch of flower seeds in front of the deck. Some of them are starting to grow, a lot were eaten by birds. (Alas.) But while we were out buying herbs and coocumber plants, we picked up some flowers - mostly because I fell head-over-heels in love with these:By golly, these flowers match my HAIR colour (most of the time). And they look like SUNSETS! They are called Sunrise Rose (so I was close) and they were hanging in a basket over my head at the garden centre and I HAD to know what they were. I bought two plants. One is called Lucious Berry Blend. They look like the sunrise ones, so I don't know. Either way - gorgeous. I hope they don't die. I am horrible at keeping plants alive. I need Jinx for that!I also bought a geranium plant, which is sort of between the flowers and my herb pot. It's supposed to help keep mosquitos away (ha!), but I also like the scent a lot, and have some essential oil I use and thought, why not have my own plant? Yoshi acts like it's catnip to him. So we call it Yoshinip.I don't know how the garden will fare this summer. We're late in the game, though the last few autumns have been hot and summer-like, so just maybe we'll have a nice September harvest. I hope Jinxy is looking down on the garden and sending us his Green Paw magic. I think he'd like this new spot. I think he'd like Yoshi. I think he'd make sure to keep Yoshi OUT of the garden and make sure he doesn't pee on it. (Sigh, Yoshi.)My garden will forever be Jinx's Garden. It will probably always continue to make me both happy and sad. I'd like to add more to the garden next year (raspberry bush!) but this year we were late, so we didn't make it too fancy. I'll let you all know when I'm selling my billions of cherry tomatoes though. Say Jinx sent you and I'll make you a good deal. ;)