kindergardens - week 4 {rawr! ... and grrrr! ... and awww!}

{RAWR!}

We have a dinosaur garden!

We started with an old crate from a friendly barn, some house plants inherited from an aunt, some moss dug up from Grammy and Pop Pop's farm, some old potting soil, leftover play sand, pebbles from one of our dead pond plants, and rocks left over from our "kinderGARDEN rocks" project last year.  Oh...and a plastic garbage bag to keep it all in the crate where it belongs.

The dirt went in first, and the plants.

Then Kiddo used the pebbles and sand to make paths for the dinosaurs to walk on.

A few rocks...some water...

And we're ready for the dinosaurs!

Kiddo is quite proud of his little Jurassic (Cretaceous?  Mesozoic?) world. 


{GRRRRR!}

Despite Kiddo's fabulous dinosaur digs, it has been a frustrating week in the garden.

We were super-excited when our new apple trees actually started sprouting leaves and looking alive a few weeks ago.

 

They were looking really good and strong and healthy.  And then I went to check on the garden one morning this week and the trees had been mauled by deer.  Half of those tender, cute green shoots had been ripped off.  Oh, SAD day.  We've taken preventative measures, but don't know yet how effective they will be.  The deer also mowed off the tops of our tomato plants, so they now have a tent of netting over them, as well.  Our garden is like an army encampment - tents everywhere!

(and a barn cat, too, of course)

We also had our first death-by-insect this week.  We've lost a cauliflower plant.  To roly polies, of all things.  Roly polies!!! (or pill bugs, or sow bugs, or whatever you want to call them).  Those innocent little things you find under logs and rocks and stuff.  Ha!  Not so innocent anymore.  I guess with all the wet weather we have had, they multiplied until we had a small mob out there.  They demolished our poor cauliflower in a day and were threatening several others, as well as our peppers.  An emergency trip to Agway for some diatomaceous earth took care of that problem in a hurry.  

Kiddo has also lost quite a few seedlings from the Great Flowerbed Flood of last week, and we are probably going to lose some of our favorite shrubs because they sat in waterlogged soil for too long.  Sigh.  

Gardening is not for the faint of heart.

{AWWWW!}

I was so frustrated with rain and deer and bugs and barn cats last night, I didn't even want to write a kinderGARDEN post, so I decided to put it off until after Kiddo went to bed tonight.  But after dinner, he and I went out to play in the yard.  

We planted some more seedlings in his flower bed...

We checked on his garden house and found the morning glories starting to climb up...

And we discovered that the potatoes he planted with Daddy were already coming up.

As the sun was going down, he informed me that he had an idea for a "really fun project!"  He had remembered the "sniffing tour" we took of our garden last year, and wanted to make a bouquet of the plants that smelled good so that he could bring them inside and smell them.  So that's what he did.

And I realized that the bugs and the deer and the cats and everything else...were worth it.

(Linking up to KinderGARDENS over at The Inadvertent Farmer.)

friday

I babysat the barn cats for a few days this week.

They are a most motley crew.

When I woke up this morning, four of them were making themselves at home in our garden.  The irony of this situation makes me want to laugh.  Or cry.  I haven't decided which. 

I also babysat this lady:

She was SO happy to see me in the morning.  So happy that she tolerated my ignorance when it comes to donkeys (or any farm animal, for that matter).  She is a lonely girl when our neighbor is away.  (And the muzzle is to force her to eat slowly so she doesn't founder...there's a small hole where the grass can poke through). 

***

I went to the grocery store this week to stock up on a few things.  Do you know what I couldn't find?  Crisco.  No Crisco.  At all.  I checked two different stores.  I realize it's not at all healthy in and of itself, but doesn't anyone bake cookies anymore?  I was (am) flabbergasted. 

***

I have the day off today.  It is blazing hot, but I am going to putter in the garden and wash the car and just spend the day amusing myself with quiet things.  I really should be working on this:

(decorations for our Vacation Bible School program at church)

But I think I will save that for a rainy day.

Kindergarden post coming soon...but for now I am headed outside!

spring {an acrostic poem}

SPRING (a poem by Kiddo)


Spring is fun.

(peek-a-boo!)

Planting flowers.

Rain is a good thing to have in spring.

I like to swing on my swing set.

Nice weather.

Good time to go outside.

(the end)

kindergardens - week 3 {anybody got a boat?}

We haven't been out in the garden much this week.  It's been a little...wet.

Rain, rain and more rain.  Buckets of rain.  Torrents of rain!

It's been great weather...for ducks!

(the newest addition to Kiddo's flower bed)

Despite a minor flood in Kiddo's flower bed (precipitating a panicked rush to "save the seedlings!", sopping wet socks and a stuck-in-the-mud-and-making-a-nice-schloop!-sound-when-it-got-pulled-out shoe), our garden seems to be thriving in all this wet.

Our brand-new blueberry bushes have tiny berries.

And our brand-new apple trees are looking more like real trees and less like dead sticks.

We got our first tomato blossom (destined to be pinched off, since the plant is only 10 inches high).

And the chives are blooming!

Cauliflower (or is it broccoli?)...

And Kiddo's calendula (calendulum?).

The earthworms are loving the rain, too - this one was HUGE.  Like, more than a foot long HUGE. 

 
(Did I mention he was HUGE?).

Hooray for giant earthworms that make our dirt less like the clay that it is and more like the fluffy loam we wish it were!

Update:  Hubby just read this and informed me that earthworms do NOT love rain.  They are just coming out of the ground to avoid drowning.  Sorry, Mr. Earthworm.

Since we can't be out in the garden much, Kiddo and I have been gardening in our heads and making big plans.   Hooray for libraries! 

 
These books have been so inspiring.  There are so many ideas to try!  Giant gardens!  Rainbow gardens!  Pizza gardens!  Sunflower houses!

Kiddo has really been enjoying the bottom four books.  He takes one to bed with him every night and comes out the next morning with another gardening project he wants to do this summer.  His favorite so far is a dinosaur garden.

His aunt has some planters of small houseplants that she no longer has room for, so we have inherited those and will use them as the base for his dino garden.  We don't have a single houseplant, thanks to our cats who
generally nibble them to pieces, but we will see if we can find a safe place for the dinosaurs to prowl.

His expanded project list also includes a pole bean teepee and a tin man scarecrow, as well as a recipe for calendula cookies (you bake calendula petals right into the cookies!).  

The sun is supposed to come out over the next several days, so Kiddo and I are hoping to plant our sunflowers and maybe get a start on his teepee (assuming the ground dries up enough to work up with the tiller).  I tried a teepee a few years ago and it was an utter fail - hopefully we'll have better results this year!

Head on over to The Inadvertent Farmer to check out Kim's awesome garden maze plans, and to catch up on what other KinderGARDENers are doing!

And, because I can't help myself, I'll stick in a few more gratuitous rain shots...

Have a great weekend!

criminal acts

My husband worked hard this weekend.

He enlarged Kiddo's flower bed, effectively doubling it in size.

Then he helped Kiddo transplant some of his seedlings into their new accommodations.

And after that, he tackled the brush-that-we-planned-to-burn-but-can-no-longer-burn pile.

The township regulations on burning yard waste changed last year.  Unfortunately for us, they changed before we had a chance to burn the rather large pile of branches, sticks and yard waste that we've managed to accumulate over the past couple of years.  So now Hubby is attacking it with a small chipper/shredder.  The downside is that it is taking a whole lot longer than burning it would.  The upside is that we're getting lots of free mulch out of the deal.  Hopefully we're he is able to make a good dent in it before too long - that's where I'm hoping to plant some of our larger vine plants (pumpkins, gourds, squash, and maybe some watermelon).

And what did I do while he was getting so much accomplished?

Well, I covered our garden beds with "tents" of bird netting (take THAT you barn cats).

I admired our iris(es).  (What is the plural of "iris" anyway?  "Iris?"  "Irises?").

I untangled Kiddo from the extra bird netting he had draped all over his swing set.

And I stood back and watched him experiment with hoses, sprinkler heads and a cardboard tube [insert wet clothing, scotch tape and giggles here].

I also went to my parents' house while they were away and stole some rhubarb (since mine is currently wilty and recovering from transplant shock).  But they know about that.

What they don't know (Mom and Dad, you should stop reading now...) is that I also stole some seedlings.

I thought I was stealing three.  But when I got home I discovered that I actually had seven.  My dad has this perennial geranium/cranesbill plant that I LOVE.  It blooms for weeks and has uniquely shaped little flowers in a pretty shade of pinky-purple.  I was admiring it while I was there to get the rhubarb, and as I was looking at it, I noticed a couple of little baby geraniums under one edge.  So I grabbed a trowel out of the garage and whisked them away to my own flower beds.  I justified my actions by convincing myself that one of the following things would be true:
     1.  My dad would have just hoed them up, since they were nearly swallowed up by the other plants in the
          bed, or
     2.  He wants to keep them, but is allowing me to babysit them and give them room to grow until he finds
          a place for them, or
     3.  He really doesn't care one way or the other and is happy to share his gardeny goodness.

But if you don't hear from me for the next week or two, it's probably because I've been grounded.