Green Thumb

Master gardener I am not. But I have fond memories of playing in the dirt in the backyard with my dad when I was younger. Fresh cucumbers. Beans. Carrots. Tomatoes. Straight from our back yard. From our hard work. Ok, my dad's hard work. But I'm sure at the time I thought I was helping. It was fun, but I must not have been paying too much attention. Because the last two years I tried to grow a garden have not turned out so fruitful.

But alas, I have decided to try it again. I've sort of been trying (key word) to embrace the slow food, clean eating movements. I'm actually totally excited that I think we're going to start getting meat delivered from a local, organic farmer this summer. Love, love knowing where our meat is coming from. What could be better than looking the farmer who raised your meat in the eye when he hands it over and being able to ask him questions. In theory I totally admire these philosophies by the way. However, so far I have proven not to be organized enough to completely give up fast food, convenience and processed foods. Which is ok with me. Maybe I will get better the more I do it and we can slowly phase "down" the convenience foods. i say down and not out because I don't think I ever want to totally give them up.

We dug up a lot of worms. And Kaelyn freaked out every time she saw one.

Dada had to come along and rescue her by throwing the "wormies" out of the yard.

The plastic shovel isn't good enough for him. He has to Mama's real shovel. Cause he's a big boy. If he's missing a toe the next time you see him you'll know why.

Anyway, however successful the garden is this year it doesn't really matter. It's still a great activity to do with the kids. A little science lesson on how things grow.  A little responsibility lesson on taking care of things. Teaching them where their food comes from. Even if we only get one cucumber out of the whole garden it will be that much more delicious because we grew it. Not to mention it'll be about as fresh as you can get. Although I have to be honest. I think I will be a little disappointed if my basil doesn't grow. That's the one thing that did amazing for me last year and I loved it! I love cooking with basil. Yum! My mouth is watering just thinking of some fresh bruschetta or caprese sandwiches with basil (and hopefully tomatoes) from our back yard.

So far both of the kids have enjoyed helping to get the garden started. Of course they both love watering. Although Bren's water usually ends up mostly down the front of him. Kaelyn loves helping with everything these days and wants to do everything herself. I thought I would let her have one section of the garden all to herself, but in reality she helped plant the whole the garden. She even got really into pulling some weeds from the flower beds last week after we finished in the vegetable garden. And has asked to do it every day since. I love her enthusiasm. If only she could go out there and do it herself. Sorry, sweetie. Mama's tired. And sore. After only half an hour pulling weeds.

I'm holding out hope that we'll actually be able to enjoy some of the fruits of labor this year. But I think we'll have a good time working on it either way.