July 18, 2008

• Gardening

  I've taken up gardening.  It started as a pet-project for me and TJ, using a strawberry plant we bought at the farmer's market.  We thought it would be good for him to learn about gardening (and, eventually, about being mindful about our planet).  It's a fun way to teach hard work, patience, and respecting nature.  Well, I really got into it and now we've got a garden!  Here are pictures of what our garden looks like.  We got some star jasmine plants to put along the fence (hopefully they'll grow nice and tall), to separate the parking area from the garden/pool area.  The fruits are starting to come out of some of the plants and Thing 1 and Thing 2 love finding them and picking them.  Thing 2 seems to have a "red radar."  She'll pan and scan the garden and as soon as she spots something red (tomato, strawberry), she'll swoop in for the grab.  The really neat thing about the garden is the kids are starting to like fruits/veggies that they normally won't eat.  Thing 1 who doesn't eat tomatoes, will eat the cherry tomatoes out of the garden.  The same thing goes for Thing 2 and cucumbers.  It has encouraged us to grow an even bigger variety of fruits and vegetables.  Not shown in the pictures are our lime and lemon trees, which are in a different area of the backyard.  Oh, and we've got an herb garden on our back porch too.  Costs the same for a plantling at OSH as it does to buy one of those plastic packs of cut herbs at Ralphs.  We'd rather have it growing and useful for months, rather than only fresh for a week in the fridge.  So far there's jalapeno, cilantro, basil, thyme, oregano, dill, and rosemary.  No picture of herbs yet.

  How gratifying it is to grow your own food!  It is healthy, yummy, and organic.  We have already started sprouting our fall plants.  I use the window sill in the kitchen as my sprouting area. 

    

  Some of the "fruits" of our labor, hehe.
   

  Thing 2 enjoying some tomatoes

  
   

  • 6:08 pm
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