Butterfly Heroes Pledge

I heard about this promotion from 2 Kids and a Coupon. If you and your kids make a pledge to help protect monarch butterflies, the National Wildlife Federation will send you a butterfly garden starter kit (while supplies last). The kit includes:

*Seed packet with native milkweed or a flowering nectar plant
*A list of milkweed and nectar plants native to your region
*Ranger Rick Nature Notebook
*Butterfly Heroes Sticker and Poster

To pledge and to receive your free kit, go to:
http://www.nwf.org/butterfly-heroes/pledge.aspx

Eating Our Garden

Earlier this week, a storm creamed our garden. The cherry tomato cage fell over onto one of the raised beds, wiping out some cucumbers and collard greens. I had to tear off many damaged green onions and replant some onion bulbs. I also just picked & kept some of the damaged onions.

Things are starting to ripen in the back yard! It's so fun going to the back yard to pick veggies for lunch. My quinoa burger is topped with lettuce, onion, and tomato from the garden. The sweet peas are from our garden, too. Colorful & delicious! I'm feeling a little proud,

My brother and sister-in-law gave me some kale from their garden. It's so colorful!

I made kale chips with some of it.

Here's half of our raspberry bounty from today. The black raspberries are starting to finish up, but the red raspberries are just getting started!

We made some raspberry ice cream by blending vanilla ice cream with our raspberries.

Another surprise from today: a golden raspberry! It's the first ripe berry from that plant.

I love having a garden! It was a lot of work setting up, but now we're having a blast starting to harvest it.

Ripe Raspberries

The last owner of our house must have loved raspberries. There are three different raspberry bushes planted along the fence, and they have gone crazy! The one in the middle has ripened first and seems to be some sort of black raspberry. The kids love eating them. No joke, Joanna has probably eaten close to a 1/2 cup of raspberries each day for the last few days. I keep telling her she's going to turn into a raspberry.

We put in a patio!

When we moved into our house, there was a teeny, tiny patio out back. It wasn't able to serve much purpose, so the last owner used it to hold her trash bins. You can kind of see it in the background of this picture of Oliver:

I wanted to expand it. First, I decided to set up the raised garden beds that my mother-in-law and father-in-law got for me for my birthday this past fall. I've been so excited to use them! We did this step near the end of March. On the left, you can see the old patio.

With the garden beds in place, we got busy digging out the patio! It needed to be at least 6" deep: At least 4 inches of gravel, an inch of sand above the gravel after it sinks in, and then the pavers on top of that. We also wanted it to slope away from the house. So, we dug down 6" near the house and 8" farthest from the house to get a good slope.

Before we were done digging, Home Depot had a big sale on patio pavers: 88 cents! We weren't ready for them, but I couldn't pass up that deal. We went and loaded up!

It took weeks to dig. Seriously, digging a giant pit doesn't sound as time consuming as it is. Well, at least, it didn't sound very time consuming to me! I would go out and dig on dry evenings after the kids went to bed, and, many days, I'd be out digging in the backyard while the kids played. It still took weeks! I'm so glad we had the raised garden beds to fill. That helped relocate a lot of the dirt.

Then came the gravel. Once again, I underestimated this step. It took so much gravel. I mean... we used more than a cubic yard of gravel! I stomped it down every inch to make sure it was well compacted. We were able to keep the slope going, too. This part was expensive. It cost us about $100 in gravel!

Then came the sand! We had it delivered for fairly cheap. We still have some leftover that I'm trying to put to good use.

Andrew used some garden trim that the previous owner left for us to trim out the patio. Then, we added a layer of sand. I had to make it kind of thick to get the pavers to the height I wanted them. I placed most of the pavers myself and painstakingly leveled each and every one. It took a lot of time. Everything about this patio took a lot of time!

There's our patio! We finally got all of the pavers in place.

We found a really nice picnic table on Craigslist for a fairly reasonable price, and I planted some pansies around the patio that my parents gave me when they visited last. Our lettuce and snap peas are starting to really grow, so Andrew used some chicken wire from our neighbor to protect our vegetables. The pansies weren't as lucky. The bunnies ate most of those flowers.

We're going to have to continue putting sand down into the cracks over the next few weeks as it compacts. We're really happy with the outcome of the patio, though. I love having a table and look forward to eating out there soon!

The kids water their garden

We're officially homeowners again! We closed on our house on Friday, and we quickly jumped into projects. Andrew's working on railings for the basement stairs, and I'm working on digging out a patio to extend the old one and planting a garden. So far, we planted a couple of early spring crops: snap peas and lettuce! I think the kids are very happy with all of the space in the house and yard, especially after our extended stay at the hotel.

Here are the munchkins watering the garden and climbing over the soon-to-be patio:

                       

Our Own Pumpkin Patch

Oliver worked so hard with Grandma Judy and Grandpa Larry all summer to grow pumpkins. A bunch started to grow and then just rotted before they ripened. Monday night, I ran out to the grocery store and picked up four pumpkins. Then, I sneaked outside and put them along the pumpkin vine (which is now mostly dead from all the freezing overnight temperatures).

Tuesday morning, I took the kids outside to see how the pumpkins were doing. Look what Oliver found!

The little pumpkin in the photos actually came from our vine, so we really did grow at least one pumpkin!

We took cute photos to use for our autumn wreath.

There's another little pumpkin growing on our vine!

Here's what we picked from the garden. All that work on pumpkin vines and broccoli plants, and we got this... haha.

On the plus side, the kids ate raw broccoli today!

Garden Bounty

Vegetables are growing, and fruit is ripening in Oliver's garden at Grandma Judy and Grandpa Larry's house.   Two and a half weeks ago, the first pairs were ready for picking. Oliver had the time of his life picking pears!

We ate our fill, and then I made spiced pear jam.

The weekend before last, we picked even more! Oliver and Jo both enjoyed fresh pairs, and I made a cranberry pear crisp with what was left. The pumpkin vine has gone crazy, and, now, the first pumpkins are starting to grow.

This past weekend, we went to visit Andrew's great-aunt and -uncle. I love their house because we can sit on their sun porch and watch Oliver roam the fenced-in yard.

George's garden was full of ripe veggies! Oliver delighted in the fact that he could just pick tomatoes off the plant and pop them into his mouth. No exaggeration, he ate two to three dozen cherry tomatoes.

And the zucchini! I can't forget to mention the zucchini Oliver picked with his Great-Great-Uncle George. Check out the size of this this thing!

We took the monster zucchini and a load of cherry tomatoes home with us. Andrew immediately got to work making salsa with the tomatoes by blending them in the food processor with a few garlic cloves, chopped onion and green pepper, some jarred roasted red peppers, Tabasco sauce, and some of my homemade corn relish. Home grown tomatoes have so much flavor, and the salsa was out of this world!

With the zucchini, I made some chocolate-cinnamon zucchini bread, and I made a vegetarian lasagna using thinly sliced strips of zucchini as a substitution for the noodles. How much fun it is to eat fruits and vegetables that you pick yourself! What's great is knowing that Oliver feels the same way. I'm glad I finally discovered a way to get Oliver to eat his fruit and vegetables--just have him eat them straight from the plant!

Planting a Garden

My mom has enlisted Oliver's help in growing a garden.  I absolutely love the idea!  It's exactly the type of project a two-and-a-half year old can help with, and it helps teach kids where food comes from.

A few weeks ago, they planted peas together.  Every time we go to my parents house, Oliver gets really excited about watering the peas.  We probably make half a dozen trips with the watering can each time we're there.

My mom decided to grow more fruits and vegetables, since Oliver loved it so much.  Today, she was ready with pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, and carrot seeds in addition to a cucumber plant, strawberry plants, and pepper plants.  Oliver was skeptical at first, but when my mom gave him the hose to moisten the dirt, he quickly got into things.

Here he is, getting the soil moistened for planting:

He and Grandma are planting watermelon seeds.  She poked holes into the mound of dirt, and Oliver dropped the seeds in:

Next up: Watering!  Oliver normally loves the watering can, but, today, he was all about the hose.

He was very precise until the end, when he just started shaking the packet of seeds everywhere.  My mom is going to have fruits and vegetables popping up all over her yard!

I told Joanna she might be able to help a little next year.  She was content to hang out in the grass.

After planting the watermelon and pumpkin seeds, I took Oliver over to his peas for watering.  They're looking good!

While we watered peas, Grandma Judy planted her strawberry plants.  Oliver had to come water those, too.  There's no slacking at Grandma Judy's house.  Even toddlers need to do their fair share!

Oliver liked planting the carrot seeds, but they were much smaller than the pumpkin and watermelon seeds.  He dropped the seeds by the handful, and then soaked them in water.  We'll have to see if they sprout!