Gardeners

Last year, we got off to a really late start getting any plants in the ground, but this spring, I wanted to get back on track, picking out our plants and digging in the dirt earlier in the planting season. Time is tight around here though and most of our weekends were focused on ballet and baseball this spring, leaving little time for tending flower beds. However, for my birthday weekend, Dave let me choose what I wanted to use our weekend for and so I chose to get the ball rolling beautifying the outdoors.

We started the morning watching Hadley at ballet and then went for a delicious birthday breakfast at L'Dee's before the work began.

Pig pancake - oink oink

There were no t-ball games thanks to it being Apple Blossom weekend, so we went to find some plants and got to work. Well, Dave got to work...Reid and Mommy mostly played outside while his older siblings napped.

Introducing him to fishing worms

Reid tried to "help" some...

...but that didn't last long.

Caleb has a bucket of cow bones he says are dinosaur bones in the garage.

And, hey, give me a little credit too! I hung the ferns on the porch...

...put together Hadley's water table...

...and had the tough job of keeping up with this busy, mud-eating toddler.

Can you find his sippy cup?

He loves sticks.

"What, Mommy? I promise I didn't eat any more dirt." - You'd think after he ate one mud clod it would have been enough. I repeatedly had to fish out huge chucks he'd put in his mouth that day. Yum!

Dandelions and dirt

I eventually made up a few flower pot arrangements either that day or soon after, but I forgot to take pics of those! However, I do have a little photo evidence of all the mulching I got to do one day after Dave finished relining the beds.

It was around this time that I was looking for a new unit to start with the kids. Some of the materials in the "Life Processes" STEM tote at the library, in combination with the season, nudged me in the direction of teaching them about plants and gardening. We didn't go nearly as in-depth as I originally planned, but we did check out quite a few books from the library on the topic and went through several of them together. 

A few items in the STEM bag

Caleb and Hadley enjoyed looking at this plant cycle manipulative.

Aside from looking in books, we also did a little planting ourselves. NaNa had bought us a butterfly plant and I picked up another little seed kit (petunias or something) from Target. 

Caleb and Hadley were very excited about this little project and it was something fun to break up the day. In the end, the butterfly plant that Hadley planted did very well and is still growing in our kitchen window; on the other hand, Caleb's did pretty much nothing but grow moss. 

In June, we got an even more authentic opportunity to learn about gardening. Since having kids, it has just been to much for me to try to plant any type of vegetables. Even remembering to water the ferns and the flowers on my porch fails to happen often. My mom had some stacked planters made though and gave me one for my birthday, which was the perfect way for me to get started in a reasonable and manageable way. We stopped by Lowes to pick up some of our favorite veggies, and the planting began!

It was right at their level. Perfect!

We don't have a spigot on the front side of the house, which is part of why the plants out there don't get watered much. On the back though, our water hose is right off the side of the deck, making it easier to keep the plants refreshed. The kids did a good job watering everything for me when they were outside pool though. Trip after trip with their buckets and watering cans they went, leaving a trail of water across the deck.

It wasn't long before we started seeing some growth from the mix of flower seeds we planted in the top. How interested they all were to get a peek!

Keep watering!

As we ate our meals, it was so fun for all of us to watch out the window of our nook and see the growth. When we went outside to play, we also often took the time to run over and check out just how big things were getting.

The beginning of the summer was really rough on our young plants though. Between bouts of scorching temps there were huge thunderstorms with torrential amounts of rain drowning them; our veggies were fighting for their lives. That said, some of our tomatoes rotted on the vines before we even could bring them in and a lot of our plants never produced anything. However, we did get a little bit of produce - a handful of tomatoes and maybe about the same number of cucumbers. Plus, we got to use some of the fresh dill we planted for seasoning some salmon at the beginning of the summer.

Our first tomato that survived!

The craziest part of this whole experience was related to what I thought was a watermelon plant. I went out one day and saw this strange looking poky round fruit growing and just assumed it was the watermelon I planted getting started, but then I noticed something else growing on the vine that looked more like a cucumber. Instead of picking them, I just let them keep growing waiting to see what kind of watermelons I was going to get out of this plant. As the days passed though, the round fruit turned kind of yellowish like a mango and the other grew into what looked to be a large pickle (yellowish in color like a cucumber that had already been canned).

When my mom was over one day, I showed it to her, perplexed about what crazy things this watermelon plant was doing. It didn't take her long to straighten me out as she laughed that I'd somehow confused what I'd planted. She says I'm no gardener, but hey who else got this much variety all from the same plant?

With Caleb's surgery and so much going on later in the summer, I eventually just forgot to water our plants at all. Some of our Romas still did pretty good, but everything else withered. 

The upper troughs were so shallow that even when I was watering everything earlier in the season, nothing was growing well, which means next year, I will have to think more about what to plant there. My mom, on the other hand, had no trouble growing things in the ones at her house...maybe I should take lessons!

Thankfully, my family and friends always come through with lots of extras from their gardens to share, especially my grandparents. One evening Dave and I took the kids up to Grandma and Granddaddy's to pick some things from a REAL garden. My grandparents enjoyed doing it with them as much as the kids loved doing it.

We even spent a little time catching fireflies before we went home. (I may not be a gardener, but I think even NaNa was impressed with my bug catching skills!)

Hopefully we learned a few things and next year we have the time and the motivation to do a little more.