Home Growth

I am wicked behind on blogging these day with work and school and life but I am trying to slooooowly catch up. This summer we did a tiny amount of gardening and I wanted to share some pictures. Rob's small crop of veggies did well and were of course beautiful to look at and tasty to eat.

One day while at Agway for something random the kids begged me to let them buy seeds. I did the whole "Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Just grab 'em." that moms do when they are in a hurry and then sat them down with dirt and pots more to amuse them than expecting anything to grow. They planted different kinds of seeds in the same pots, forgot to water them, and even Gus (the dog) knocked them over more than once. But low and behold, many grew and grew HUGE.

Watermelons - One watermelon seed took root and right before vacation I was like "Man, I better at least put this into the ground before we leave so it maybe will have a chance." I quickly stuck it in my flower bed (once again sure it wasn't going to grow) and when i did it was about 2 inches high. When we returned a week later it was huge and starting to sprawl.

It produced two melons. We had never grown watermelons before so we found out the hard way that we picked them way too early. BUT the red-ish one still was tasty. Next time we'll do a little more reading up and prep work so we can actually enjoy a fully ripened one. The kids were still very excited to eat the fruits of their labor.

These were some they planted and they grew higher than Elise!

These I bought but wanted to show you the flower box Malachi made for me with Daddy one day :) I love it.

And last but not least - this may not look like much but it's a young golden rain tree that I started down in Maryland from just a tiny twig and I can't wait until it's grown and starts to flower.

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All four of us are excited about planting a large garden next year. We plan to use about a third of the back yard (and one third for the chickens - I want 3, Rob wants 6.... we'll see. He DOES eat a ton of eggs...) We're already planning our planting strategy so that we have things coming up at different times all spring, summer, and fall long.

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I love nature.