Even though I feel like I got nothing done today, we did expend some energy. One of the projects was planting our garden (finally!). Paul and Hannah are so eager to help and be involved, sometimes it’s hard to keep their energy from being destructive to the project.
We put in our tomato plants (four of them, a Sweet 100, Lemon Boy, Mr. Stripey, and a Beefsteak), 6 pepper plants, red beets (Detroit Dark Red, I usually plant Red Ace, but I didn’t bother to order seeds and I never found any Red Ace in the stores), and a first planting of corn (Seneca Snowshoe-65 days and Ambrosia-75 days) and beens (Roma II).
Here are some pictures.
Paul & Hannah watered the holes where
the tomatoes and pepper plants went.
They really wanted to help plant seeds. I gave them
each a handful of bean seeds and told them to
plant them in a row. Paul took it literally and
planted his in a row. Hannah put hers in various
ways, and at one point announced hers were in
a circle! They planted their seeds several times,
putting them in the ground, then gathering them
up and planting them again. Finally, they announced
they had covered them with dirt so they could
“sleep and take nighty-night”. I’m not really sure
where they are or what pattern they’ll come up in
but we’ll know when we see the green stalks!
Even though they both had full baths
last night, I don’t believe a hand & foot
washing in the sink will cut it after
today.
When there was a lull in the gardening, here’s one
way Hannah used her spare time.
Our strawberry abundance has been well-enjoyed
today. Hannah even asked for more as we were headed
to bed. I told her she could have more tomorrow.
I feel like we’ve had a stimulating day for Paul & Hannah, even though we didn’t do any book-reading or school time or any of our usual activities. Paul and I did have a discussion about who makes the seeds grow (God), who makes us grow (God); can we make seeds grow (no), and that seeds have to die before they can grow. Even though I’m not sure he can follow it, I did put out the fact that people have to die before they can go to heaven to live with Jesus. All this was while we were putting corn seeds in the ground.
It is so neat for me to think back to last year and the year before and see how their involvement and enjoyment of gardening had changed and grown. I will say that gardening right now is much easier than when they were dirt-eating toddlers who couldn’t walk! I think we’re in for a great summer. I really hope we can get some rain. If not, I hope to be able to keep up with watering our tiny garden, or else there won’t be much reward in it for Paul to see.
[...] start to finish since beans don’t grow and produce in an hour or two. You might remember this post about planting the beans. After the beans were planted, all along we prayed for God to make the [...]