What's the opposite of a green thumb?

Whatever it is, I've got it. Despite this, I am going to try really hard to start a vegetable garden this year. I planted 150 or so seedlings inside in early April hoping to have them ready to transplant around this time. Meanwhile Ilya and I have been preparing the raised beds outside to receive them.

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Here is the yard before tilling.



Here are the raised beds semi-setup.



Here are the seedlings indoors a few weeks ago, well on their way to planthood. The bean plants especially took off!



But then a week ago tragedy struck. I had just moved the plants back inside after a couple of hours in the sun (to gradually acclimate them to their future home), when I unknowingly locked Simon in the room where we keep them. He had so much fun down there that for 3 hours he didn't make a sound. Then he started meowing and scratching at the door, the telltale sign that there is a cat locked somewhere in the house... Needless to say, when I opened the door to let him out, a botanical warzone lay before my eyes. Luckily, his attack was somewhat selective. He ate 5 of my 6 lovely bean plants...but really not much else. Unfortunately a lot of other plants were trampled and knocked over during the feast, since the beans were standing in the middle of everything. Of course I couldn't be angry for long - afterwards he was standing there with his big round eyes, looking up at me as if to say, "What did I do?." I was the one who locked him in afterall.

From the aftermath, I still have 40 or so seedlings left. In the meantime I have started another round of seeds to replenish the ones I lost. Now my goal is to keep as many alive as possible during the transplant to the garden. Any tips from you experienced gardeners out there? I have restarted the acclimation process and am putting the plants out in the sun for 1 hour greater every day, until eventually I will leave them out overnight, and then transplant them.

We started composting about a month ago and already have a batch of nice dark compost to add to the plant beds. We bought an automatic composter that turns the compost over every few hours and keeps it at the right temperature, so it makes compost really quickly - a new batch every 2 weeks. Hopefully this will help condition our "soil," which is basically pure clay.

Here are the scraps going in...



...and the finished product a couple weeks later. Cool, huh?



Now that the weather is nice, Ilya has some other yard projects going too. He will put in a patio next to our screened in porch, a storage shed in the northwest corner, and at some point we will also put up a fence. We hope everything will be done by the time Masha is up and running around the backyard... :) :)