busy bees

Spring is upon us and so if you want to find us we'll be outside weeding, pruning, tilling, and planting while the kids play in the mud. If it's raining, we'll be inside cleaning muddy floors, doors, clothes, and boots...again. We'll also be reading books like How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry, Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert, and 1001 Bugs to Spot from the Usborne 1001 Things to Spot series.

We have onions and garlic already growing in our new vegetable garden, which we relocated this year. The soil is really good on the south side of the house, so we are very hopeful that this will solve many of the problems we had in our old garden, which had poor soil. Yes, that is a tree stump in the middle of the garden - our rain gauge is attached to it and I think it will come in handy as a "table" when it's time to harvest.

On Saturday we added 13 tomato plants, 12 sweet bell pepper plants, 2 varieties of green beans, and our first row of carrots, beets, kohlrabi, and radishes. Sunday was a lovely day for planting zucchini, cucumbers, and acorn squash. We are also going to plant some cantaloupe, watermelon and a sunflower house with the kids this week. I'm tempted to plant pumpkin, butternut squash and buttercup squash seeds from last year in the old vegetable garden, just to see if they grow. I also think it would be fun for the kids and help to keep them from over-watering and stepping on seedlings in 'my' garden. We have tomato cages to build, mulch to spread and watering to do - especially on a 90 degree day like today!