kindergardens - week 5

It's been a busy week in our kinderGARDEN!

We finished setting up Kiddo's pole bean teepee and have been watching the beans find the holes in the landscape fabric as they sprout.

 

We tackled a flower maze, inspired by the one suggested in the Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots book by Sharon Lovejoy (speaking of, she is going to be one of the judges for the kindergarden contest!  How cool is that?!).

 Our neighbors probably thought we were out there making crop circles, but hopefully they will fill up soon with beautiful flowers!

We planted sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, mexican sunflower, sweet annie, delphinium and poppies, and probably something else that I am forgetting.  Kiddo is very excited about having his own "secret room" in the middle of his maze.

Kiddo and I also planted some Indian corn...

(aren't they pretty?)

and I also started some sunflower seeds, hyacinth beans and several vine plants (cucumber, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, acorn squash, gourds and pumpkins). The corn, sunflowers and hyacinth beans are all sprouting...

(hyacinth bean)

but we are still waiting on the vines.

Last night we harvested our first veggies from the garden - radishes!  We don't eat many radishes (but we had to grow them - they are the "R" in our alphabet garden!), but Hubby has several coworkers that really enjoy them, so he took a bagful to work with him this week.

In other gardening news, Kiddo found some volunteer marigolds in the path of his flower bed, so he transplanted them to a safer spot.

The morning glories on Kiddo's garden house have really taken off.  We've been measuring them daily as they grow.  The taller vines are already more than 2 feet tall and are growing as much as 3 or 4 inches a day!

Our blueberries are starting to blush a faint blue color!  I'm dreaming of blueberries on breakfast cereal, blueberry pie and blueberry pancakes.

And finally (yes, long post...sorry!), our mulch has arrived!  Kiddo was an eager helper last year, and he was equally excited to dive in this year. 

He insisted on mulching his flower bed all by himself.  Mommy and Daddy were not allowed to help.

How many more years do you think we can keep this up before he decides it isn't any fun any more?

(he's getting a better handle on that wheelbarrow now)

This little guy showed up in the mulch we got three years ago:

You'd think that one of these days, we'd just pull him out and throw him away.  But every spring he just gets buried again, only to show up sometime during the winter.  He's becoming a bit of a fixture, I guess.  Instead of garden gnomes, we have a garden...starfish.

To see what other kindergardeners are up to, head on over to The Inadvertent Farmer.  There are several new faces popping up, and lots of cool ideas percolating out there (and super-cute kids, too)!