views of a garden

So. Here it is. The giant country garden we have been plotting and planning for years.

I'd love to say that its been all roses and rainbows working on it, children by our side, but in reality this is how gardening with kids goes...

Day #1

"Kids. We need to go out to the garden."

"Yay! Gardening!"

Follows with happy digging holes, planting seedlings, watering with mini-duck shaped watering cans.

Day #2

"Kids we need to go out to the garden."

"Okaaaaaaaay...."

Follows with helping mama poke seeds in the ground for five minutes and then running off to pick dandelions and throw to the chickens.

Day #3

"Kids we need to go out to the garden."

"But MOOOOOOOOM!"

Follows with kids ripping open random packets of seeds and planting their "OWN" gardens in random spots. (Okay, fine, that happened once.)

Day #4

"Kids we need to go out to the garden."

"Do we HAVE TO? I WANT TO PLAY INSIDE!"

Follows with kids biking and doing their own thing while you garden, which, lets face it, is kind of blissful at this point. HA.

And so it goes.

Nevertheless, with a small break for de-tick-i-fy-ing the back yard, we managed to get a heck of a lot done the past few days.

We even had our first admirer stop by, a minivan rolled past slowly, then backed up, then pulled into the driveway, our neighbor, or "country neighbor" from down the road, who wanted to see our "beautiful garden" up close.

Yes!

Is it prideful of me that both me and dada were totally pysched?? HA.

So far we have bean pole and sweet pea teepees, to be forts for the kids in the hot summer months, a flourishing bed of strawberries, greens planted last fall and in early spring under the protection of the hoop house, several boxes with tomatoes (and more to plant!), cabbages and kale, a box of broccoli and cauliflower, mounds of watermelon, pumpkins, squash and zuchinni in the back with corn planted here and there around it all, a long row of sunflowers planted on the side, and my favorite, three potato towers made out of sticks poked in the ground, wound with wild vines pulled down from the trees and stuffed with grass clippings and dirt (they are seriously beautiful, the idea is to add layers of dirt as the plant grows and then it keeps producing more and more potatoes.)

That is a lot of vegetables.

And a lot of work.

But we are so excited by it. When dada finally finished the fencing around it he called my phone and told me to look outside, where he proceded to take a bow to his admiring audience. HA.

Happy.

the potato towers waiting to be filled
 

luckily my adorable baby sister was here to visit and she
totally knew how to do this...first we layered some dug up sod around the edges
then we filled with grass clippings and dirt in the center

 

then we put in our potato starters (you can cut them up into chunks but i didnt because i had a ton)
then we covered with dirt

 

the finished towers. then just keep layering with dirt and clippings on the side
as the plants grow.

my herb garden, waiting for herbs (next weekend!)

bonus! dada found wild grapes in the woods!

and see that clump of bushes? not bushes. wild blackberries!

just waiting for a gate.
LOVE.