My garden: successes and failures...

My garden is having some wild success right now and yet, at the same time, some dismal failures.

First of all the success, the raised bed that I gave to the boys for their play garden is growing LIKE CRAZY!  I only put 2 tomatoes, a cucumber and 1 pole bean plant in there and they are doing so well.  The crazy thing is, I didn't do anything to the soil in that raised bed because I thought they would kill everything I planted.  No compost, no tilling, no mulch, nothing...and yet they grow!

My raised bed on the other hand is a completely different story!  I amended the soil, I tilled the soil, I formed furrows, I mulched with straw, John put in a drip system, and yet, things are DYING!  I have planted zucchini 3 times!  The snails have killed each and every plant.  I put strawberry baskets around the seeds so they could get a good start, and yet the snails managed to get in.  Seriously depressing.  My tomatoes are doing well, and my bell pepper are hanging on, but they sure aren't pretty.  My potato tower is a flop (my friend Shelly's is growing like crazy, so I know it works!) and my zucchini, well, I've decided I'm done trying with that for this year.  Today I finally grabbed a bunch of wildflower seeds and threw them out in my bare spots mostly just to see if I can get SOMETHING to grow there.  It just might not be my year.

Where my zucchini are supposed to be...

My raised bed.  Tomatoes in foreground, potato tower at the end...

My failing potato tower...

Other than working on the actual edible portion of the garden, I do have a couple things going well for me.  The first are these 3 cute little teacup birdfeeders that I made...

And, of course, the second thing going well for me in the garden are my helpers.  I've got the best ones around.  Henry is just as concerned about my dead zucchini plants as I am.  At least I have someone to commiserate with :) And Charlie, he keeps things well-watered as he has just recently figured out how to work the nozzle on the hose :)

Despite my failures, we're still having fun over here.  But, if you find yourself with a bunch of homegrown surplus, feel free to send it our way.  We'll gladly take anything you've got :)

Learning to mow the lawn...

I walked outside last week and saw this...

Apparently John is ready to outsource his lawn mowning to Henry...

Henry was loving it...

And so was Charlie (this meant he got the toy lawnmower all to himself!)...

Henry got this lawnmower from Grandpa Royce & Grandma Gail for his first birthday and it is STILL a hit!  It gets pulled out every.single.time daddy mows the lawn...

Charlie just took the toy lawnmower and followed daddy and Henry around the yard...

...and mom enjoyed the fact that both boys were occupied outside with daddy for a good 30 minutes!

My winter garden is done...

Everything in my garden started flowering and going to seed in the last few weeks, so clearly, it was time to rip it out.  Henry is always up for any gardening task, and he is especially interested in anything that involves chopping the heck out of plants with his new "chopping hoe" that he got from Grandma Gail and Grandpa Royce for Christmas.  So, I set him to work on ripping things out while I made dinner.  I had the window open in the kitchen, so I enjoyed watching him work...

Charlie wandered around the yard, and was very good about staying out of Henry's way (that chopping hoe has necessitated many discussions on physical restraint and the importance of belly button level chopping swings!)...

Henry refused to throw any of the plants he chopped into the trashcan I set out for him.  He insisted on putting them all on the grass in between the raised beds.  He was doing my work for me, so who was I to argue?

However, it wasn't long before our grass was COVERED in garden remnants.  I finally called out the window to Henry asking for an explanation, and, of course, our little thinker did indeed have one.  He told me that he was throwing the plants on the grass because he was playing "Palm Sunday" and he wanted to lay them down like palm branches so that Jesus could walk over them on his donkey.  Who was I to argue with THAT rationale?!  I let him continue, of course.  After he covered the grass he would grab palm branches (aka: winter garden remnants) and stand in the raised beds and wave them up and down and shout, "Hosanna!  Hosanna!  Hosanna!"  Then he just started shouting, "Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday!" It was probably the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

After the Palm Sunday play, he got back down to the business of chopping...

And Charlie continued his play at the water table...

 and sandbox...

Our raised beds have been the best addition to our backyard.  Seriously, who knew they'd foster biblical reenactments?!  Henry told me the other day that we had the best house ever.  I asked him why and he said it was because of our play gardens.  It made me feel good to hear that.  We certainly don't have a lot of space outside for the boys to play, but with a little bit of creativity we can really make what we do have special :)

Our play garden...

Henry really enjoys gardening with me.  He loves to put on his farmer shirt (anything plaid), work jeans, and farmer boots and help me dig, water, plant, and harvest.  Lately he's been talking about having his own garden. After some discussion, I've decided to go ahead and give the boys one of my raised beds for a play garden.  We have some big plans for this play garden!  We are going to plant pole beans and make a bean teepee, we already planted some violas and ranunculas (except Henry ripped off all of the pink flowers because he said he's not a girl and only girls like pink!), we also want to plant 2 tomato plants at one end as a barrier, and maybe try our hand at planting grass seed to create their own little mini baseball field.  We are going to leave lots of dirt so that they can create roads and dig holes, of course.  I also buried one of my old kitchen bowls so that they can have a pond too.  We've hardly even started and the boys have already logged hours of playtime out there!  We'll do an update on this as things progress.  So far so good though!

Outside play...

Just a few pictures of the boys playing outside.  Charlie spent most of his time copying Henry or playing in the mud.  Henry got dressed up in his "farmer clothes" (jeans and a plaid dress shirt) and watered all of my plants.  And I ran around taking pictures of them so that I might savor these memories :)

A car wash...

John and I had planned to build a car wash out of PVC pipe for Henry's birthday.  We sort of never got around to it.  BUT, it was finally built this weekend and it was a big hit!  My dad built Ben, Denise, and I one of these when we were little and I remember having so much fun with it (although it seems as though it only made an impression on me because Denise and Ben don't remember playing with it at all!)

**Is it just me, or does Henry not look completely grown up in these pictures?!