kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 16

It is certainly the dog days of summer. It's so hot. But Matthew has been faithfully watering his plants.

His hard work is paying off in the pepper pot.

Hey Matthew, what are you doing? Well, I take this seed ball in my hand and I step on it...

See Mom??? We seem to have "wild garlic" in the flower bed and this is it's top set. I would saying it's walking onions, but some of it is definitely garlic.

Here is a picture of the plants that have died off for the time being.

A bee doing good work in a pumpkin blossom.

This guy has been a guest in our garden the last couple days. Matthew and I were pretty intrigued by him.

One of the radishes has popped up. It has such a long stem that Matthew thinks it's broken. I told him to just wait.

We seem to have alot of baby carrots going.

And most exciting of all, we have our first baby tomato. I told a friend of mine that they were setting blooms, but none were catching. She told me to take a finger and thump the flowers gently to help them. I don't know if it worked or not, but we have a tomato and that's enough for me!

Week 16 of The Inadvertent Farmer is here.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 15

Yesterday I tried to upload pictures to a new post. An hour later it was still trying. I then tried to log out. It thought forever and never logged out. I tried to do stuff in my email account. It refused. I ran my antivirus program and for the second time it shut off the computer. Why am I sharing this on a kinderGARDEN Thursday? Because I've decided to take my computer to the experts to get sorted out. That equals no pictures. :(

From my Mom's computer I'll talk a little about what I would have said. I would have said that I'm in the mid-summer slump, where the garden isn't performing fast enough, it's too hot, it's become been there done that might as well not water it and be done with it-slump. But Matthew is still enthusiastic about watering and I know I'd be sad if the garden died, so I decided to shake things up this week. Matthew and I went out and planted radishes and carrots for our winter crop. Matthew is very excited about the carrots as he has decided he loves them this summer. After we planted we got a HUGE thunderstorm, so we'll see if the seeds got floated out of the pots or if they just got some good rain water.

The only thing growing in the garden at the moment is peppers. There is several sizes and finally one has been on the bush long enough that it is RED! Phil will be happy to see that when he gets home. The tomato plants that have grown to the whopping 2 to 3 feet tall, have been flowering, but not setting fruit. Now one of them looks like it has some sort of tomato wilt. Sigh. I will say I have been truly amazed by the differences in the varieties, just in looks.

The Inadvertent Farmer had a guest speaker, Susan, today. You can read the post here. Susan talks about good garden design, or some of her favorites. I would love to be able to just read the post and implement the design in my yard, but unfortunately I do not have the talent. Maybe some day I can afford to pay someone to help me move my beds into more interesting arrangements.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 14

Our first tomato crop! NOT! Our neighbor brought us over a bag full of yummy tomatoes. Our garden is only growing peppers so far.

So this...

+ this...

= Yum! Well, to me anyway. Matthew has decided that tomatoes are on the yucky list, just like his Dad. The only way he likes them is in spaghetti sauce, ketchup, and salsa.

To read this week's The Inadvertent Farmer, go here.

Swim Lessons Summer '10

This week was swim lessons. The first day we cried huge alligator tears for 2/3's of the time. (It also happened to be raining so we were all soaked and discouraged.) We changed to a different class that one of his friends was in. It went better. Here he is being an alligator. The boy in front is the son of a girl I went to high school with.

Yesterday he actually agreed to get in line and go under the hoop. When they took him to the 4ft pool and tried to put him in a life jacket he told them, "No thank you, I already have one." and then hid behind his friend's Mom.

He even alligatored through the hoop. He steady fastly refused to let the teachers help him float. He tried to show them he could do it himself though.

He got 3 checks out of 13. That might be 1 better then last year. He did not get a check for fully submerging his face, but considering he doggy paddled for awhile with his face underwater, I think he should have! There is always next year.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 13

This week The Inadvertent Farmer wanted to know what we believe. Week 13 post here. I believe alot of things, but I'll confine myself to the realm of gardening today.

I believe that this has been one of the most jam packed busy summers we've had yet as a family. Which leads me to admit that I'm glad we container gardened this summer because that meant we could mostly ignore the garden and it continues to grow in bursts, every so often.

I believe this is the least I've ever watered or weeded a garden. (I don't just believe this statement, I know.)

I believe that I actually miss having to weed. It makes gardening more interesting to me. This sterile garden is a little boring to me. But because of my first belief, I don't think I could have kept up with the weeds we've been so busy.

I believe that my 3rd attempt at cilantro and lettuce will be sortof successful. Matthew and I want to eat that lettuce so bad, but it's too small yet.

Matthew and I believe that there will be more purple green beans and tomatoes too. (Ok, this is a hopeful wish. The tomato plants aren't as big as I'd like, but they are starting to bloom and the purple green beans bloomed like mad and gave 6 beans, which bugs ate 5 of so we are wishing like mad for more.) Here is the purple green bean straight from the garden.

Into the pot all by it's lonesome.

And presto! It changed color. I believe we have magic beans!

Matthew liked his magic bean half. He wanted more. So did I. Half a bean is not filling.

I believe that even if we don't get a single thing more, this gardening experience has been successful.

Tomato Trouble

My Dad is having tomato trouble. He stopped raising tomatoes for so long because they seemed to be plagued by some sort of wilt. As I've stated before this year he decided to try once again. And they are going yellow and curled in some spots. Does anyone know what it is? Erin, I know you have a wonderful helper, Granny Pea? that helps you. Would either of you know? If you think you know, leave a comment!

Happy 4th of July!

The big ones.

My coffee table over run.

The pyromaniacs.

Part of the show.

The crowd said, "NO PICTURES!"

Have a fun and safe 4th of July!

Tractor fun

First you start out the day with your pedal tractor and pull your bulldozer.

Then you allow Mom to ride your pedal tractor while you supervise. *photo taken by my Mom

Then when the tractor's battery goes dead, you change it out. *photo taken by my Mom

Later we convince Poppa to give us a ride on the real tractor.

And you finish up the day by watching MaMaw get into the action herself!

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 12

I just love Thursday! I wait all week to see what is happening in everyone's gardens. I check my computer 20 times starting at 10 am to see if The Inadvertent Farmer has posted yet. (Last week was a real nail biter.) I think all week about what I might want to talk about. Ah Thursdays...they always felt like a tease before, almost the weekend, but not quite yet. But now they are the gardening mecca of the week.

The Inadvertent Farmer's post for week 12. This is a cool post on how to make recycled pots for plants.

To start our weekly post off I'd like to show a couple photos from The Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. Our family doesn't get there often, but it has alot to do. We always have a great time. It was my garden paradise, until I went to Powell Gardens. But that's just from an adult viewpoint. I think from Matthew's, the Farmstead is better.

I love how they use old farm equipment in the flower beds.



We did alot of stuff, but one thing we allows have to do is pet...

...and feed the goats.


Matthew has been wanting to fish all summer, so we paid $3 to rent a cane pole and a bucket with 6 worms. We didn't catch a thing. The sun perch stole all the worms right off the hook. The nerve.

No day was complete without riding pedal tractors either.

Back at the ranch, I mean town house, Matthew and I came up with our own little recycling project this week. We took a cooler to the park, for Matthew's birthday, and it has been needing to be dumped. Let's not talk about how long I procrastinated the project. Anyway, yesterday I decided to drag it out to the back steps to dump it. Then it came to me. My husband complained it was the most expensive bag of ice he'd ever bought ($4.50) so why not use it to water plants? So we did.





And at the end, he watered the steps. I'm sure they needed it. While writing this post Matthew announced it was time to water. He donned his boots and he watered, while I inspected the plants for caterpillars. I didn't find any, but I did find where 2 of our 4 purple green beans had huge holes up and down them that the ants were playing in. Nature's whistles. Then I picked one that didn't have holes, so Matthew and I will cook our one purple bean for lunch and share. While inspecting the plant I noticed it'd thrown another 2 beans that were, are you ready for this? GREEN!