seedlings

Yesterday afternoon we got some seedlings in the ground.  Xiao Ren (our current helper) is the one who helped us buy them (actually, her mom found them for us - 16 seedlings for a dollar) and she was definitely in charge of the whole shebang, me and the kids just followed her instructions.

I'm not sure she was prepared for "planting with children" and one poor tomato seedling got trampled on several different occasions, but she stuck with it and I was grateful. 

This is such a fun project for us.  Isaac loves anything that has to do with dirt, so he's a natural fit :)  We chose to get a 'mop sink' in our courtyard which is proving to be a very wise move.  Everyone can clean up before they even come back inside.  The mop sink is low and accessible which means lots of hand washing (aka getting really good and wet) for Isaac. 

The girls and I are still reading through the Little House on the Prairie series. (We started last fall, took a long break while we traveled and transitioned, and decided to go back and start in book one again.  We are flying through them, the girls always begging for more chapters.)  So between hearing about Laura (in the Little House books) and Almanzo (in Farmer Boy) we're getting lots of exposure to planting and farming and 'living off the land'.  And now to have our own little patch of dirt to plant it just plain fun. 

 

So our garden is really shaping up - little cabbages (growing like crazy) plus tomato, winter melon, pumpkin and cucumber seedlings. 

I still have pretty low expectations for what might actually grow and thrive, but we are all having a great time and I will consider our garden a success, even if nothing produces edible crops :)