On hot days it is much more fun to squirt your toes* than to water the vegetables.

*or your mother's toes.  or your baby sister's toes.

What's Growing - Early April

Bok Choy just started.

Strawberries under bell jars.

Fennel which I can't seem to kill.  Made the awful mistake of allowing it to self seed, thinking we would eat the fennel bulbs.  Why did no one tell me that digging up fennel bulbs is harder than pulling out poke weed?  Despite being able to carry over 50 combined lbs of child up multiple flights of stairs, I can't pull out fennel to save my soul.

Also in the ground: brussel sprouts, cauliflower, romaine, snap pea seeds.

Other herbs that have poked through or come back alive for spring: chives, sage, lavender, thyme, mint

What's growing where you are?

Pulling weeds together in the cool early morning hours helps soften the fact that every day the three year old will insist on getting up at the crack of dawn.

Coffee helps, too. 

But honestly, even before he was born, being in the garden with a cup of coffee, pulling weeds before the heat of the day, was my favorite way to spend a morning.  So now I have some company :)

There is no better tasting water than the stuff that flows out of the garden hose.

In fact, it is so good that instead of drinking from an ice cold cup,  he will try to catch the random drips from the leaky outside faucet.

I guess (hope) that this is helping build his immune system and strengthening his stomach for surviving camping in the wild and trips to all manner of foreign lands.

Mr. McGregor

While prepping the herb bed, I discovered a rabbit's nest.  With two baby bunnies in it.  They are living directly under the chives. I don't know if this adds to my moral dilemma (which is:  keep them where they are and sacrifice a bunch of my plants to their rapacious appetites or move the nest and hope the babies survive in some new, far away location), but I found the rabbits on Easter.

Suppose I will need to consult the three year old.  Feel pretty sure that he will insist we keep them.

So long to my early crops.  Bon appetite Peter Rabbit.

Or...

I'd love to hear what you think we should do about the nest.  Please comment!

Quick and practical lessons in mortality.

Earth worms? Good.
Bees? Good.
Grubs? Swiftly sent to the Great Garden in the Sky.

Mommy, Can I Sit up 'dere?!

Plum trees in bloom. Climbing them is a new and intense fascination.

 

Oh, Mommy! I really like eating the chives. They're my favorite.

Who knew?

It's best to pull a cantankerous weed early.

Even if it takes a lot of muscle, clear the bed fully before you sow the crops.  It becomes impossible to pull once the vegetables start to grow.  And every time you reach in to harvest a yellow squash, there is that weed, strong and deep and intractable and leaching the nutrients from your precious plantings' soil.

Besides, the best bugs are always hiding in the roots.

It will take one minute of playing with those earthworms before he decides they would look good in your hair.

Or his hair.  Or his baby sister's hair.

It's easy to learn colors when you're looking for the sweet ripe red strawberry among the sour green and white ones.

A three year old boy can hold six earthworms in one hand at one time before they start escaping.

And escape they will.  In the most grotesque curly cued slitherings in between each of the fingers of the clasped hand.  He will find this hysterical and amazing.

The universe in a green bean is the circle of life.

Watching your own child watching the seed which he planted grow to the plant that blossoms that bears the fruit that he eats right there in the garden that you both grew together.