Saturday, August 15, 2009

Weeding, Watering & Weiners

Paula called us all together on Wednesday night @ 6:30 to meet up at the garden for an evening of weeding together, watering together, and otherwise checking up on the progress of our gardens.

There was a bunch of us all together again:
Paula, Hailey, and Samantha
Melissa, Glynn, and Patrick
Michelle, Brandon, and Brody
Tony, Stephanie, Emily, and Aaron
Lynn and Phillip
and
Yours truly, Myrna, and Sarah

I believe we are all pleased with the progress so far. With the exception of Paula, gardener extraordinaire, I think we all have something that seems to be "failing". But overall, we are getting great results and "failing" is certainly not a term we would use at all to describe what we are doing. We are learning! We are progressing! We are figuring out which are weeds and which are not. We (I should say, I) are discovering that spinach is not to be confused with romaine lettuce. Boy, how embarrassing!


Tony, Stephanie and their family even found a mystery plant in their garden which appears to be parsley. You see, Stephanie's father had come with granddaughter, Emily, back when we were planting, and left behind a "surprise! Look what we planted!" garden.
Melissa is absolutely thrilled with her cabbage. She is the only one of us who planted it and it's doing very well. But Paula had a little mini cabbage101 session with us and showed us all how to look deep inside the head to find these little green worms and pick them out. They're super hard to see (being green and all, smart little buggers) but if they stay in the cabbage, they'll eat the whole thing from the inside out. Who Knew!!?? We are just learning all kinds of neat stuff.

Then there's Michelle and her family who decided to just throw a whole bunch of leftover seed potatoes up the side of our pile of DIRT and just LOOK at how they are growing! Guess it just goes to show a garden can be just about anywhere one wishes to plant a seed.
And poor little Phillip, running around like all our kids do, slipped and fell down and ended up with a scraped and swollen lip. Before his mom had a chance to kiss it better, he was off and running again.
Of course, Sarah, did what she does best - she ate! She would pick the leaves of lettuce and much away! Yum!

Did I mention our pumpkins are starting to grow? Let's hope we get enough for everyone to carve a jack-o-lantern for Halloween!

Then, we were in for a treat when Brandon got a fire going and Michelle broke out the weiners and marshmellows. Who doesn't love the chance to get together with a group of friends to roast treats over an open fire. It was a beautiful evening (with not TOO many black flies) and we chatted away about our common interests - our rambunctious children and our sprouting gardens.
Melissa, a nurse, shared a few healthy eating tips in conversation and assured us that the occasional hotdog and sugary treat were okay as long as they were combined with a healthy diet including those delicious veggies!

I shared the story of my sister's youngest daughter, who, when camping, thought she could sit on the edge of the scorching hot firepit, and burned the backs of her legs AND her little hands. Luckily my sister was right there in front of her to immediately scoop her up and rush her off to the emergency room, where she was treated. It may be a sad story, a difficult one to hear, but it proves that you can never be too careful around fire. Children are quick, usually much quicker than their parents, and can come in harms way in the blink of an eye. So, please please please be careful if you're planning an activity like this for your little gardeners.

Before we knew it, it was time to head home. Poor little Aaron was sooo tired. Look at those tears, oh my! Good Night little sprouts! Sleep well!

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