Jenny and I have a new project for this year: a vegetable garden. We built a raised garden in the backyard off the end of the porch. Friday night we planted cucumbers, tomatoes, banana peppers, squash, zucchini, green beans, basil, carrots, and leaf lettuce. We are very excited to see what happens! We already had some other tomatoes and strawberries growing in pots. It still amazes me that God can turn a tiny white seed into a tomato plant that provides food for us, using nothing but water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I’m thankful that it works. We’re trying to use organic techniques to take care of the plants, minimizing our use of pesticides and other non-natural chemicals. We’ll release ladybugs to eat aphids. We planted some marigolds to repel some types of bugs. To enrich the soil, we mixed in peat moss and compost rather than artificial fertilizer. The veggies should begin to sprout within a week or two.

In SWA news, we plan to add service to Washington Dulles (IAD) this fall. I was NOT expecting IAD as our next city, further proving that SWA is full of surprises! I think Dulles will be a good airport for us, nicely complementing our Baltimore service and pulling in passengers from the rapidly growing west side of the DC area.