Weekend Garden Work

Saturday night we all sat around the dinner table feeling exhausted. Good exhausted from working outside all day, the way we all want to feel more often.  Andrew and Emily mixed up peat moss, vermiculite, and a few different types of compost to fill in our garden box for square foot gardening.  Emily and I collected rocks to fill the pots for our herbs and lemon and avocado tree. Everyone was very dirty and we did a two phase bathing process, carrying the kids straight upstairs from the outdoors, cleaned off the mud, cleaned out the tub, and then did a normal bath.  I read Daddy-Long-Legs after getting the kids tucked into bed (sort of – Nathan still wakes up every 10-15 minutes so I read in alternating bits with Andrew and felt less enthused about feeling exhausted) sitting on the couch with a warm breeze blowing through the house.  It was the perfect day.

A short aside about this book by Jean Webster.  It might be my new favorite ever.  A neighbor recommended and lent me her copy and I had very low expectations.  I was thinking it was a bug book. BUT NOPE.  It is the most wonderful book written as a compilation of letters by a college aged orphan girl to her anonymous sponsor sending her to college. It ranks up there with Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Little House on the Prairie.  Oh my goodness I’m in love.

Emily has started a peculiar activity. She drops dirt on the cement and then draws chalk circles around them and then fills them up with more dirt.

The last few months I’ve been hoping to start a little herb garden.  I’ve looked at lots and lots and lots of options for containers and how to grow them, but every time I went into the store I would get overwhelmed by options and prices and not sure what I really wanted.  After some serious thinking, I decided if I could have any container in the world I would love to grow my herbs in little tin pails, and that it was important to me enough to wait until I found some.  I figured I would keep my eyes out at goodwill and garage sales.  Well one day after a night of very very little sleep and I was a zombie, I had to run to a store over by target and felt impressed to actually go to target too.  I don’t like going shopping, and I really don’t like going shopping when I’m tired.  But I miraculously had the ergo carrier in the car so I figured I could pull of a successful trip with Emily in the cart and Nathan in the carrier.  When we walked in the front doors, there were tin pails – EXACTLY as I had imagined them – in the DOLLAR section.  So I spent $4 and and got four pails.  These are literally presents from God.  Every time I look at them I just feel so much love. Now hopefully the herbs will grow!