A Garden Lesson

My Grandpa Heaton's garden last week.

For some reason at the beginning of the season, I always seem to compare my garden to my grandpa's (particularly the onions). His vegetables always seem to be bigger, healthier, and more abundant.

In comparison, mine are smaller, more insect eaten, and the seeds don't always sprout. I begin to question myself and all the time and work I've put into this garden.

Our north garden a few weeks ago.

Our south garden today.

Then, I go out into our garden, and I start to work. I water, and weed, and watch the plants. And something happens. I change my mind and my thinking.

I begin to see that the plants are growing a little bit everyday. I start to notice the beneficial insects, like ladybugs, that are crawling on the plant leaves. And then Asher and Zoe notice them. So I get to watch their wonder and fascination.

The pomegranate flowering.

Tomato blossoms.

I get to see little miracles happening, blossoms here and tiny new fruits there. And I begin to know that this little garden is such a blessing to our family. And for a brief moment, I realize that I no longer need to compare. And that feels good.

Dans le Jardin

The north garden is now mostly planted. There are four squares left to plant.

We've been busy the last few days planting all sorts of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. We've also needed to replant some turnip, leek, beet, and spinach seeds. (Our Littlest seems to think that the garden boxes are his personal playground. This is rather frustrating, but more importantly, I feel our family needs this gardening/learning experience.)

Last time I wrote about the garden, I mentioned that the leeks had sprouted. I was wrong! It was actually these lovely little plants. I forgot where I had planted things, I've since remedied that mistake by writing it down on the garden map. When the leaves started to show, I realized it was actually the spinach!

A few creatures have come to visit the garden. Most recently the ladybug. The lizard runs back and forth between the garden boxes in the north garden and the pomegranate bush. One time he ran himself into a plastic bag of soil. When we dumped him out onto the tarp he got buried in the soil. I started panicking a little bit because I didn't want him to suffocate! Luckily we found him.

One more little anecdote...

Yesterday when Zoe, Ashy, and I went back to the nursery, we saw my grandpa there. He was getting some more tomato plants for his garden. I told him a few varieties we were trying. One in particular caught his attention. The Wilford Tomato. I told him I got it because on the tag it said it was a local variety developed in Kanab. He then proceeded to tell me that it was his dad's brother, Wilford Heaton, who developed it. Pretty cool, eh? Ahh, the things we're learning...

Little Moments

Yesterday, I was washing and changing the sheets on all of our beds. I had a nice folded stack. The colors looked so pretty and the light was coming in just right... (So I decided to take some pictures.)


I decided to have Asher help. And I'm so happy I did!


I love those little moments that just happen.

I sat him on the bed and he just got to work. Folding and rolling and playing.

The work of babies.

It was fun to watch him.

It felt good to watch him be in the moment. And I hope this is one of those little moments that gets to stay with me for always.

I got these vintage lovelies from The Bee Boutique on our recent trip to Gene's mom's house. The Bee Boutique is a name Angie calls the D.I. Isn't it so cute? (She also gave the idea for collecting the vintage lovelies in the first place.)

In the Garden

I thought I was going to regularly post about what's happening in the garden...
Let me give a quick update:

The onions are growing (even after I transplanted them from my grandpa's and didn't realize this new method of gardening was going to require me to pay attention to the watering).

The turnips and leeks seedlings have sprouted up through the soil, and are getting bigger everyday. I'm going to need to thin pretty soon.

The daffydowndillys (from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett) have been blooming and most recently the tulips.

Zoe and I noticed that the carrots are just barely coming up from the ground as well.

The apricot tree has lost its blossoms, but there are tiny, little, green apricots forming.

And one of the cherry trees has just started to blossom, albeit in a very small amount.

All of us here are working and hoping for a bountiful garden this year.

Soil Mixture Recipe

This is the soil recipe from the book I'm reading. It's called Mel's Mix. I started this on Saturday, while Gene was away with the three older ones. IT WAS A LOT OF HARD WORK!

This will fill three 4 foot x 4 foot boxes.
ingredients:

3.8 cubic feet peat moss and 2 bags of 4 cubic feet vermiculite.

8 cubic feet of 5 different bags of compost. The dump didn't have their compost ready. I'm hoping I'll get some on the next batch!

I had to mix everything in half batches. There was SO much. This is half of the 5 bags of compost. The other half is in the wheelbarrow.

Mixing in one bag of vermiculite with the compost. Vermiculite is VERY lightweight. The bag size looks deceptively large at the nursery.
Mixing in the peat moss. Now, peat moss on the other hand, is VERY heavy. I couldn't lift it. I had to have help at the nursery, and at my house ( my dad lifted it out of the truck). And I rolled it around my backyard.
The final product.
The pitchfork was wonderful. (I'm so glad I asked for it at Christmas.) My black boots: also wonderful, for mixing up a bunch of crap. Literally. The tarp was small, but necessary for mixing everything.

The boxes filled up. By the time I got to fill them on Monday, everyone was back home. Like I said. VERY HARD WORK!

Garden Boxes

Last Friday, I took the two littlest kids with me to Home Depot. We bought these 2 x 6's and had the store cut them into 4 foot lengths to make 3 garden boxes. I also bought a bag of turkey manure compost.

Later that evening, Gene told me that my grandpa had some old 2 x 6's at his house we could cut up and use. We went over the next day, and found lumber good enough to make 4 boxes.

We drilled 3 holes into one end of each board. That took awhile because the drill bit kept slipping down. (Also, I had Gene take a picture of me drilling because it always looks like HE'S the one doing all the work.) Anyway, we thought we had the right length of screws at home, but it turns out we didn't. So we loaded everyone up and took a trip over to Ace Hardware.

We got home and started fastening the boards together by rotating the corners to make a square box. Gene and I both think we probably could have done without the predrilling.

7 boxes down, 3 more to go! I'm going to get to go back to Home Depot. Yipee!

(After many pencil erasures, this is the layout I've finally decided upon. The drawings should be switched around.)

Industrious

Last Saturday we went over to my grandparent's house. Isaac had been wanting to help my grandpa with some outside work. My grandpa thought it was too wet to move manure to the garden, but Isaac was determined.
My grandpa showed him how to shovel the manure from the bottom of the pile instead of from the top. He told him to keep everything at one end of the wheelbarrow. By the time Gene got there to help, Isaac was giving him pointers!
This little brother is learning how to work, just like his big brother.

After he was finished with his work, Isaac kept asking his dad to build him a tire swing. Gene was helping me cut wood for the garden boxes. He was busy, and told him "later." Awhile later we went to check on him and the other kids. And guess what? Isaac made a swing for himself!

I'll bet you can't tell I think a lot of this kid.