Our first garden

This winter I decided that we are going to garden this year.  I figured that we would start small, probably a container garden, but we would have something growing.  I became excited with the idea and spent cold winter days researching container gardens and preparing for the upcoming spring.  I had visions of perfect matching clay pots neatly lined up growing our amazing vegetables.  I couldn’t wait for spring.

As soon as the seasons showed signs of change, my attitude changed as well.  I couldn’t see past the dollar signs involved with my perfect matching containers and organic seedlings.  It didn’t take long to table the idea with the thought of “maybe next year”.

Then one day my stepmom showed up with a flat of seedlings and quite a few containers and told me to buy soil.  I looked at the not perfectly matching plastic pots and the nonorganic seedlings for over two weeks.  The images of my cute, perfect garden were gone and that was fueling my excitement.  It's not that I'm not extremely grateful of the gift, but even with everything delivered to my doorstep, it still seemed like so much work.  Finally I just decided to do it.  Seriously, who turns away a free garden?  I had to get these poor little plants into some soil this weekend, I just knew that they wouldn’t make it another week.

Sunday morning I brought the boys outside and began planting.  William immediately wanted to help and quickly figured out how to cup his hands to transfer dirt from the bags to the pots.  He loved watching me put the seedlings in the soil and cover up the roots.  He even started adding sticks and picked dandelions to imitate the little plants.  We made several references to The Lorax.  Collin was more entertained by our horse tire swing.

When we planted about 2/3 of our seedlings, I realized that we were not only short on soil, but containers.  With William’s help, I watered the already planted containers and then went to buy more soil and containers.  This is what we planted at this point:

William.  My dirty little helper!

When I got home the boys were taking a nap, so I finished planting the containers myself.  When I finally planted the last seedling, I couldn’t help but to proudly look at our garden for a while.  The containers may not all match and the plants may not be 100% organic, but we put a lot of work and effort into it and it’s ours.  Honestly, I think that it looks pretty cute, even all mismatched!  We have nine cabbage, three broccoli, three red bell pepper, three hot pepper, and six tomato plants.  Not bad for a first garden.