Eating the fruits of my labor (No, not the kids)

When Kate and I were looking at housing options in New York, we gave bonus points to apartments that had access to a private garden area. Fortunately, there is actually more private 'garden' area in the city than you'd think. Unfortunately, a lot of it looks like this.

But with very thick gloves on and with broom and hoe in hand, Kate, Elizabeth, and I embarked on a disgusting adventure to clean up 15+ years worth of trash, biomass, and neglect, including a few rusty propane tanks, countless peanut shells and candy wrappers, a lot of bird-poop-and-cat-poop-stained patio furniture, and a lot of weird stuff like a car stereo, sports equipment, partially liquified cardboard boxes, and moldy rug padding.

Here are some progress shots. 

Here are some post-clean-up / pre-garden shots.

And here are some early garden shots (including Elizabeth playing in her kitty-poop-proof sandbox).

And here's what it looks like now:

I thought I would enjoy gardening more than I actually do. To be fair, most of what I've done is not so much gardening as it is cleaning up. The part I've liked the most is 'harvesting,' which is mostly done by Elizabeth.

We like to have Elizabeth pretend like she's helping by getting her all dirty and giving her the hose for a few minutes. Cuteness entails. 

This is the cutest picture I've ever posted. Double click.