Gardening

Thanks to Becky and her super fun WOW (within one week) carnival, I managed to tackle my overgrown flower beds and get them spruced up in time for summer.  I realize many of you did your spring planting early this spring, but I already told you yesterday, I am not always timely.

Check out the before and after.

Flower Bed #1:

I’d still like to cut my rose bushes down some, but I think you will agree it looks MUCH better than it did last week.

Flowerbed #2:

I grabbed our shepherd’s hook out of our shed and added a wind chime from our deck and a new hanging basket.  It’s my favorite part of the bed.

Flowerbed #3:

A close up of the plants.  I added some Impatients in between each of the hostas.  Impatients work well in shade which defines my front yard.  And it seemed an appropriate plant for the circus…cause we needs lots of patience here!

Flower Bed #4

Note the watering can—my kids favorite part of the project!

Flowerbed #5:  The Garden

Despite my lack of follow through last year, I am going to try again with a small vegetable garden.  I purchased a tomato plant, 2 red pepper plants, some squash, zucchini, and some pumpkin seeds.  I got the garden weeded and a weed tarp laid down.  I didn’t get the vegetables planted yet.  I hope to tomorrow morning.  I am also hoping to tear out some day lilies (read get my husband to dig out the day lilies) in the side bed in front of the fence, to plant more vegetables if needed.  I am thinking about plating some lettuce seeds in a big flower pot to sit on my sidewalk.  I’d also like to plant some sunflower seeds along my fence.

Check out the improvement (and my neighbor’s dog)!

I am really thankful to Becky for hosting this carnival.  Without it I am not sure I would have made the very concerted effort to tackle our flower beds (at least not in the last 5 days).  I am so happy with the curb appeal it has provided to our home.  And now that I’ve gotten started, I think I may have forgotten about my not so green thumb and I am eager to tackle some veggies!

Visit Becky to cheer on some other productive bloggers who tackled projects this past week.

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Despite the fact that I lack a green thumb and raise suicidal plants, I still attempted a garden this summer with my kids.  Some may call me a hopeless optimist, to others I am just naive.  But, my oldest two children were particularly excited about this new venture and I didn’t want to let them down.

This April we planted a row of peas, a row of green beans, a row of pumpkins, two tomato plants, and two pepper plants.  

At first we had several pea plants sprout up.  I didn’t know you had to stake them though, so they eventually withered away.  I had two green bean plants pop up, and I got a whopping total of 2 green beans (and a whole lot of weeds).  

Later we had pumpkin plants pop up and even produce nice yellow blooms.  I really held them out as the promised plant, the ones destined to bring forth great produce.  I imagined the golden pumpkins sitting on my stoop all in a row this fall.

They failed to germinate and the blooms eventually withered leaving me with green leaves and dead blooms. 

But, my tomato plants have not let me down.  We’ve had about 7 or 8 tomatoes so far this summer.  Today we went to check to see if we had any more red ones and we had the mother load waiting for us!  Check out our tomato harvest!!  And we have at least as many more on the vine waiting to turn red!

While we didn’t exactly raise enough to live off of the land this fall, at least our grand experiment wasn’t a dismal failure.  We got something pretty for our efforts, and it might be just enough to motivate us to try this again next year. 

For more tackles, check out 5 Minutes for Mom.

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I weeded our flower beds this week with my 4y, 2y and 9m old. This is not an equation for efficiency, but we had fun….

We found an earthworm and I was really proud of myself for not going “eek” when I uncovered it in the dirt. Not only did I not shriek, but I feigned excitement and got my kids to be excited about it. My 2 year old tried to eat it (you have to watch her)! My son was enthusiastic about holding it. When he found out that you use them for fishing he said, “Oooh, I’ll put it in my pocket so Daddy and I can bring it fishing.” Hmmmm, guess I better start checking his pockets. He was very concerned that the birds would eat it if he didn’t keep it. We found a nice hiding spot behind some flowers.

Despite the fact that I lack a green thumb, we bought some flowers at Wal-mart yesterday to plant in our front flower gardens. My kids were so excited! I even splurged and got them each a mini watering can. Does it get better than that? We spend several hours out front weeding and then planting and then, the best part, watering the flowers. We saw our neighbor who is about 6 years older than our son and my son eagerly invited him over to join us in our weeding. He kindly obliged and when he went to his shed to go get his tools my son admonished me to slow down on the weeding.

“Mom, don’t pick all the weeds. We don’t want to run out. We need to share them with Tommy.” This made me chuckle. Running out of weeds isn’t a problem I have ever experienced in my limited time gardening.

The flowers we were planting were called Impatients. Seemed appropriate as throughout the afternoon the conversation went something like this.

“Mom, are you done weeding yet? Can we plant the flowers?”

“Now, can we plant the flowers now? I am ready to water them.”

“Hey mom, is it time now to plant the flowers? I got my watering can.”

FINALLY it is time to plant the flowers. We begin with the first one of 18. By plant 2, it is…

“Hey Mom, can we water them?”

“When is it time to water them?”

“I’m ready to water them.”

Finally we got them all planted and then they got to water them. It was pretty cute watching them pour the water from their cans. I also loved watching my daughter pat the soil around the plant… something about those tiny little hands patting down the soil, it was like a Hallmark moment or something.

Don’t forget the baby. About half way through the process she decided she didn’t want to be left out and she joined us, sitting on my lap. Digging the holes one handed was a bit slow, making the process take even longer. It was close to dark when we finished.

This morning when the kids woke up, my son told us he was so excited to look out the window last night to see his flowers. THIS is the part of gardening I enjoy. He also thought the flowers were thirsty and would need watering again today. Perhaps these plants have a better chance of survival than the last flower I brought home. Maybe green thumbs skip generations.

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