Garden Days

This year we seem to have a couple of avid mini-gardeners on our hands so we decided to step up our gardening game a bit from years past in hopes of cultivating a love of growing things. We've got a nice row of lettuce going, and last week we planted beets, beans, tomatoes, squash and pumpkins along with some herbs, sunflowers, and nastursiums. Retta planted my spinach seeds somewhere too, but time will tell where they ended up. She dumped out the bag of seeds while I had my back turned....and she's been digging in the dirt trying to copy what she sees us doing, but the problem is she's digging up our seeds we've already planted. So, it will be a bit of a miracle if anything actually grows in our garden, but we're trying! Now we just have to practice the garden's greatest lesson, patience, while we wait to see what grows.

Preparing the soil

The littlest "helper"...wearing Mommy's hat

Drawing some rainclouds in hopes of a good watering for the garden

Rowan's herb garden...I love that she wrote all the labels for our plants this year--so cute to see her 4-year old writing.

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Retta likes to sneak behind the trellis

Caught in the act

Miss Rumphius has been here

Tree Hugger

My daughter literally is a tree hugger, and I couldn't be prouder. She's recently taken a liking to the willow tree near our driveway- swinging from it's branches, sometimes using our mini-trampoline as a springboard onto the branch for her acrobatics. A couple of weeks ago, she randomly decided to show this tree her appreciation by making a sign all by herself that says, "I LOVE YOU TREE" and taping it to it's trunk. It reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. My heart just about broke from the cuteness of it all. Yes, it's true, this level of innocence and love abounds here these days. I know it may not always be this way, but right now I just love that our kids have the capacity and desire to do these simple, beautiful acts of kindness on their own, whether it be giving me yet another bouquet of weeds and flowers, drawing us a love note at school, or making a card for a tree.