Playing in the Garden

Although the kids and I spend time in the garden every day during the summer, to be honest, more of that time is spent playing than gardening.  While I would love to get more real gardening done, it is so much fun to see how creative my goofballs can be. They make cakes out of dirt and feed their stuffed animals flowers. They bring their books out to read in the garden.

Lily makes fun beds for her toys out of flower petals.

Sometimes this turns into random dancing.

When the kids returned from Michigan a few weeks ago it was way past time to tear the snap pea vines and teepees down.  The only reason I left them up until they got back was because I knew they'd get a kick out of all the snails living in the old vines and supports. I can't stand the snails, but the kids love them.  If I find a snail in the garden they practically fight over who gets to hold it and play with it.  Luckily where there's one, there's usually ten more so they don't have to fight too long.

The pea vines were housing tons of obese snails and when Lily and Jasper saw them all, they were so excited you would have thought Yoda was coming in the front gate for a visit.  While I was picking the rest of the peas that were salvageable and tossing them into a bowl, Lily and Jasper were collecting all the snails in old pots.  

I had to bite my tongue when they started feeding the peas to the snails.

Lily called it her snail aquarium.

Last week, the kids took some of their legos and plastic animals and made a jungle out of sticks and plucked parsley leaves. 

And this week, their obsession has been pretending to dig up fossils in the dirt.  They bury their toy animals, dig them up and wash them off in a bucket of water, over and over and over again.  My creative girl even had the clever idea of using a chive blossom as a soft brush to dust the dirt off of the fossils so she wouldn't damage them.

Oh, and one fossil, our giraffe, even got a new hairdo thanks to some old sunflower petals.

Our garden really is a playground for Lily and Jasper, one with endless possibilities.

Garlic, My Love!

I love it when the garlic is ready to dig up, love, love, love it!  This is only our second year growing garlic and it has quickly become one of my favorite veggies to grow.  It's easy, successful, pests don't like it, and we use garlic in cooking all the time. Jasper likes to sit in the raised beds by the garlic; it's his forest.

Garlic is such an unassuming crop; it doesn't have big showy leaves or huge fruit ripening in front of your eyes and you plant it in the fall knowing you have to be patient, patient, patient.  But.  It.  Is. Wonderful!  When the tall stalk-like leaves all start to turn brown,

I dig one up to see what the bulb looks like, and viola!

The kids helped me dig up a few bulbs; then they were bored.  But they loved the gaping holes I left all over the raised beds from digging up the rest of the garlic.  I'm sure I'll be finding lego people buried in the dirt for the next few years.

Potting Up Strawberries

We've had a pretty successful strawberry crop so far this summer and even more are ripening now. And with successful strawberry plants come runners!  Our strawberry runners are going crazy, they are outrunning us all.  For the most part I've been clipping them off or ignoring them, but our Hood strawberries were so amazingly delicious that last week I decided to pot up some of the runners and increase the number of plants we have so I could plant some in the backyard for next year.

It's an easy task that I can do with or without the kids.  I just put some good potting soil in a pot, gently push the runner into the potting soil right where the roots are starting, cover the roots with more soil and water in nicely.  Some people pot the runners up while leaving them attached to the parent plant.  Once their own roots are well established (a week or two) you then clip them off the parent plant and they are ready to be on their own.  I've also heard you can clip the runner first and pot it up all by itself.  I was curious so I tried both ways.

So far all the ones I clipped off of the parent plants first and then potted up on their own have withered up and died.

All of the ones I left attached to the parent plants are looking great.  When I have time to pot up more, this is the way I will do it.

Jasper and Lily got the hang of potting up super fast and no sooner had I potted up a few strawberry plants, when I look over at them and they had potted up some goofballs!

Sunflowers Are Blooming!

Finally, our sunflowers are blooming!!  Yeah!! 

We started a few seeds indoors months ago.

Lily planted the rest outside in the strawberry bed in April.

They've been growing...

...and growing

...and growing!

I love that something so tiny,

can turn into something like this...

and this...

and this...

Lily and Jasper got home late Sunday night and the first thing she wanted to do on Monday morning was check on her sunflowers and make garden bouquets.  Love my girl!

We Love Bugs & Creepy Crawlies!

I never thought I’d say this, but I love bugs!  Most of us don’t utter that phrase very often.  But growing into a gardener over the last fifteen years, and gardening with my kids, a love for them has rooted in me.  If you have kids, you know, they can make anything fun, even bugs! Worms, butterflies, ladybugs, black beetles, snails, bees, and dragonflies are a few we see regularly in our garden throughout the spring and summer.

Lily knows that ladybugs are our friends because they “eat those pesky aphids,” and that worms help keep the soil healthy.  She can talk about bumblebees and butterflies as pollinators.  And she shares my disgust of those cute white moths, which lay the green cabbage worms capable of devouring our vegetables before we can.  Anytime we see a white moth in the garden she alerts me.  One of her favorite things to do is feed the bugs; she makes americanos out of dirt for the worms and helps the snails eat our peas.

Jasper just squeals with delight no matter what kind of bug he finds.  It’s become our afternoon routine to dig for worms and search for ladybugs.  He happily picks snails off of the fence to let them crawl on his hands and arms.  I think they like him, until he gets tired of them tickling his arm and squishes them.  Unfortunately for the worms as well, he’s not quite as delicate as Lily is; he gathers them into his hand and holds them tight, way too tight for way too long.  Generally I have to pry a handful of dead worms from his hands when we go back inside.  Sometimes the things I love about gardening with kids are also the things that make me go Eeeew!

Now, Jasper’s absolute favorite thing in the world to do is go out into the garden and tip all of my pots over (especially the ones full of plants) to find bugs.  I’m not sure how the plants feel, but it sure is fun to watch.

Two different friends gave Lily and Jasper  bug viewers this spring and oh my goodness what a blast we are having with them!  So far we’ve seen ladybugs, worms and a dead beetle through the magnifying lenses.  Super cool!  I’m constantly amazed at how much my kids (and I) are learning in the garden just through exposure.

After one sunny Saturday of playing in the garden and viewing bugs in the bug viewer, Lily made up her own bug.  It’s called a Primi bug and this is Lily’s description, “The Primi is the ladybug’s baby.  It has eight red legs, a brown body, blue eyes, black spots and claws, if bugs have claws.  Primis are the ladybug’s cousin (I guess in Lily’s bug world a bug can be both a baby and a cousin!) and they help ladybugs eat pesky aphids, and they eat mosquitos, yup those Primis love them some bad bugs!”

Eating My Way Through the Garden

Well, my kiddos are still on vacation in Michigan with their GramS, and I miss them like crazy, but I am enjoying the lazy pace of these summer days until they return.  Greg and I came home to a garden bursting with growth.

The strawberries are going crazy, the sunflowers are ready to pop open, I have more snap peas than I know what to do with, and the weeds are on steroids!

So what am I doing in the garden while I wait for Jasper and Lily to come home?  Eating!!  I've been picking strawberries every morning, snacking on peas throughout the day, and for dinner, sautéed kale and garlic scapes. YUM!

I find picking and eating the fruits and veggies is the perfect distraction from weeding.

I sure hope some strawberries are left for my two garden monkeys when they get home!

Oh Strawbaby!

Right before we left for vacation our strawberries started to ripen. I bought three different kinds, Hood, Seascape and I can't remember the third one, because Jasper snagged the garden tag and no matter how many times I tried to remind myself to write it down somewhere else, like here, for example, I forgot. 

They are going crazy!  And they are so so so delicious.  If you haven't ever tasted a strawberry from the garden or from a berry farm or your farmers' market, do it!!  And what a fun crop for kids.  Lily loves them and tries so hard to wait until they are really ripe to pick them.  Jasper, well, at first I thought I was going to have to return him as my child, because the first few he picked, he tasted a tiny bite and then chucked the rest into the dirt.  Ahhhhh!!!!  I'm not sure what was wrong with him or his taste buds, but that phase didn't last long and now he's addicted too.

One bummer is that the majority of the berries will be ripe while we are on vacation, but the friends we have watching our house will get to enjoy them and I love sharing the harvest.  Right before vacation we got to share our garden with cousin Sam, Aunt Tricia and Uncle Kevin.  So. Much. Fun!!!!!!

We're in Ohio where it was 100 degrees yesterday and I'm having nightmares about all our plants withering in this heat...but wait! It's not 100 in Everett, WA!  Still, it's hard for me to be away from the garden at this time of year. I just want to be out there every moment watering, fertilizing, picking fruits and veggies, breathing in the scents, and watching my plants bloom alongside my goofballs. But we are having a blast with family, old friends and new ones.  And I can't wait to see what surprises await us in the garden when we return.