The last couple days I've spent as much time outside with the kids as possible. The weather has been amazing and we've played hard, dug up worms, planted flowers, swung to the skies, and prepped the vegetable garden. Our neighbor inherited a tiller and saved me hours of back-breaking work last night by tilling a bale of peat moss and four large bags of composted manure into the my garden plot. The robins love me now -- they are now feasting on 100 square feet of lucious earthworms and creepy-crawlers brought forth by all the earth-moving.
This morning, as soon as we got breakfast eaten, I took all three kids out back and we planted the veggies. Anna mostly crawled around and took dirt samples from the various pots and hills laying around the yard. Then she poked the garden with my weeder for awhile, enjoying imitating her mom.
Sam and Elli took turns plopping yellow squash and zuccini and cauliflower seeds into the dirt and smoothing it over the top. They also had a lot of fun with the hose, watering them in. Then Sam got distracted by the vast quantity of worms we were finding, so I had to reel him in to plant the tomatoes. Heather acted as his earthworm babysitter, holding each worm for him while he carefully set the plants into the holes I dug. Elli had a difficult time getting comfortable in the dirt, but she did seem to enjoy being included. Getting her wheelchair out in the grass is a bit challenging and its alignment now seems to be scewed. Small price to pay to get her out of the house and enjoying the Great Outdoors.
I still need to plant some pest-controlling flowers around the veggies and some more lettuce, then mulch the whole thing. Elli picked out some flowers to plant in the shade, which we still need to do. But the bulk of the work is done.
Correction.
The bulk of the spring work is done. Now I have to keep up with the weeding, pruning back, staking, and harvesting.
P.S. I have photos, but first I have to figure out how to download them to my computer!
