Last Saturday afternoon was beautiful and sunny and I had invited a friend over to visit. Originally we were going to stay inside and talk, but the weather was so beautiful that we decided to go outside and plant a few flowers that I got for Mother's Day in our garden in front of the house. Since, we purchased the house almost two years ago we really hadn't had much chance to even plant any flowers or do much of anything outside other than basic maintenance.
The project was supposed to be simple. I needed to plant some flowers that I had received for Mother's Day before they met their untimely end on my windowsill above my kitchen sink. Honestly, I only needed to plant three petunias, a pansy and a lima bean (my daughter brought home from school). The plan was to plant the flowers in the raised bed in front of the house next to the shrubs. However, when my friend was raking the dead leaves out of the garden we discovered landscaping fabric. I really did not want to cut holes in the landscaping fabric so I decided to create another garden.
It took me around two hours to dig a small little plot in a semi-shaded area of our yard. The kids more than willing to help. My 7 year old daughter took off her shoes and dug with a garden trowel, while my 3 year old son played in the dirt. I wish I had a picture of how dirty he managed to get. Let's just say he looked like he had a goatee made out of dirt. My six year old daughter also did her share of digging, and playing in the dirt. I put my oldest was in charge of finding some good sized rocks to use as a border for our garden.
When finished digging and adding compost our new garden, we planted our flowers and lonely lima bean plant along with some flower seeds. I finished off our garden by adding a few lengths of plastic border fencing that I found in the basement.
After the garden was finished the kids and I stood back and looked at our creation. It was a small but cute little garden. My six year old said that she had had the most fun that she had had in a long time. The job took hard work, and cooperation to finish. In the end we created a wonderful memory for the kiddos to think about when they look at their new garden. In addition, the kids all slept well that night.
Lessons:
Who needs a screen to entertain kids? Get them outside and let them dig in the dirt.
If you come to my house for a visit you just might get put to work;) I want to thank you to my friend Kara for all of the help.
Garden Update: as of Thursday June 1st we spotted several tiny sprouts coming out of the soil.
Comments
Post a Comment