*Kristal, your comments lead me to believe you didn't see the dimensions of this bed. It is 4' wide so a 2-3' path down it wouldn't be practical. * Since the gardener didn't mention any barrier like a building or fence, it isn't out of line to suggest a little widening. As Kristal said, that would be the biggest help for the gardener and the plants. A few feet of space for branches to spread out into and a bit more sun available to the peppers would be good. For spacing, my peppers were at 1/1 (1 per square foot). They should have had supports from the start, too. (They get so heavy from the ripening fruit.) I would use 2 rows of short fence along the sides, or maybe the "large" commercial tomato cones for peppers--and eggplants, brussels sprouts, and I'm experimenting with the cone idea this year for zucchini. (Plant the support, then the plant.) Canteloupe may also do better for you in 1/1. In fact, I put all my melons at 1/1 on a separate, west-side trellis. (In Texas, some veggies rejoice in summer shade.) Canteloupe "slip" off their stems when ripe. Either rag slings or really deep, soft mulch to land in fixes your problem with "canteloupe bombs". The bush beans can go 9/1--just make a tic-tac-toe board in the square and plant in the centers of the spaces. I used the wire cages, pushed down almost half-way into the dirt. Nothing ate the bean seeds, and the 2x4 wire supported the plants. (They twine around and support each other pretty well, too. You don't *need* to provide any support or barricade.) You will probably get 2 harvests from the beans, and maybe a few stray pods after that. I'd be sure to plant a basil on either end of the tomatoes--great chemistry for each other. I had 19 tomato plants, and not one lost to insect damage. The basil may get huge on you. Just whack it back to 24 inches a few times, and use the leaves fresh with tomato slices and mozzarella cheese--or hang cut branches and harvest the dried leaves. You can sow the mesclun so very thickly that none of the plants ever mature. Harvest with scissors--just snip off near the base and let them regrow. If you allow about 4 plants to a square, you have standard squarefoot spacing, and then you just pull the outer leaves as you need them. Short-time growers like radishes can tuck into the corners of the lettuce squares for extra veggie harvests. Radish leaves are excellent in soups and salads, and particularly in stir fries. You can put in more peas on that trellis for the fall, too. I haven't grown your onion. Mine did fine in 16/1 (Draw a giant plus sign. In each of those 4 spaces, pop 2 fingers into the dirt twice, so you have holes at the corners of an imaginary box, centered in that square.) Isn't it funny how we keep shoe-horning MORE stuff into the plot? ^_^ Most importantly, plant a comfy lawn chair to enjoy your garden properly, and have fun!

Jackie, You did a great job!!! That's a great idea and I love your graphics. I always enjoy your projects. Keep'em comin'

Three live hot wires just sitting inside walls was our most exciting find in my last house. One was right below where they took out (and did not replace) a header that was under where two different roofs met. It tended to leak in that area, too. In the farmhouse where I lived as a child we used to find cool things. Out in the pump house, a hole in the wall exposed a wooden butter ladle. And one day someone picked up the wooden thing we used as a step up into the old apple tree to discover that it was a butter press. It would be used like a cookie-cutter on a large, semi-hard slab of butter to cut out a 4 or 5 inch circle, then you pressed the plunger down to impress the butter with a 3D flower pattern. The exploration of my 1955 house in Baton Rouge, LA showed us that previous owners (concentration camp survivors) had created a space the size of a small closet that you could only enter from the attic. There was a ladder going down and a cot inside. From inside the living space, you did not really miss the space much. It was where the living room, den, and kitchen came together. They had a desk recessed into the wall in the den. But what they had really done was to build a new wall in the den, cutting off 4 ft of the room on one end, and recessed the desk into one end of that wall. Because the wall ended right where the entry into the kitchen was, on one end, and where the entry into the bedroom hallway was on the other end, it did not occur to you that the room used to be longer. The living room was on the other side of the desk wall, and for some reason, it just was not obvious that the space next to the recessed desk was missing from the floor plan as you walked around in the house. That room already had a nice closet on a different wall.

Oh, I'm doing much better than those--LOL! Your list looks extravagant to me this year! I'm making patchwork checkers, backgammon and tic tac toe boards from my leftover fabric scraps. For the teens, I made scarves (from my bin of leftover yarn). I'll be filling in with some home-baked bread, homemade jellies and candy. So far, I've spent exactly 3.98 and I already have about 8 gifts put together.