Watching the Garden Grow

We have been having the most amazing spring weather here in Chicagoland the last few weeks.  We were even able to spend a weekend planting our garden full of our first round of vegetables.  Caleb and I check everyday after we drop off the kids at school to see how our garden is growing and are so excited to see the beginnings of our radishes, spinach, lettuce, and peas! 

Our sweet neighbor gave each of the kids a small pot filled with “dirt” (oreo cookies, chocolate covered raisins, and milk duds) with instructions to come over to her house to fill them with her real dirt and seeds when the goodies were gone.  They were so excited to receive these pots and, as you can imagine, ate their treats as quickly as they could.  They went over to plant their seeds and came home with cherry tomatoes, sunflowers, and pumpkins.  Since it isn’t quite warm enough for them to be outside yet, we’ve kept them in the window sill in the kitchen and they are growing like crazy!  I am really hoping that it warms up soon so we can replant them outside in the garden before they get too big!

They each have been so interested to watch their plants grow and are amazed each day how much bigger they are getting.  This is such a fun time of year!

Pumpkins

 Cherry Tomatoes

Sunflowers

Warm Weekend

We had some amazingly beautiful weather this past weekend. It was so nice to have some warm weather and be able to go outside without a coat--Caleb doesn't realize that you can actually go outside without one! The kids and I had a lot of fun playing together and talking to our neighbor. We got out the balls, bubbles, bikes, scooters, and sidewalk chalk. Kelsie, our artist, couldn't wait to cover the sidewalk with original artwork.

We went on our first family bike ride of the season over to the YMCA to celebrate Healthy Kids Day on Saturday. We had lots of fun running around and answering questions to win prizes. They each got a new water bottle, a couple of balls, frisbees and new balloons. We came home a while later and planted our garden. Wally was kind enough to prepare the soil for us the night before, and Kelsie did all the planting this year. We were able to plant peas, radishes, and lettuce growing in the garden. We're going to plant some carrots and flowers later this week. We're so excited for our crop to come in! Brandon and Caleb had more fun digging in the dirt and throwing it at each other. Boys will be boys I guess!

It truly is amazing the difference it makes to have a couple of nice days thrown into all these not-so-nice-days we've been having. We are excited and ready for summer! We were outside all day on Friday and Saturday throwing balls, playing frisbee, and planting the garden. I can't think of a better way to spend a warm weekend!

I Can Can, Can You?

Remember my post about our overflowing abundance of tomatoes? Want to know what we did with the first round?

We started with lots of these:

Hired some cheap labor:

Turned it into a sauce:

And ended up with this:

8 1/2 pints of tomato sauce and we're still not done.

A Year of Plenty

We have tried in the past to heed the council of the prophets to plant a garden and to be prepared. Our first real attempt was while we were in Pennsylvania and we tried, so hard, to nourish our little tomato plants all summer long. We weeded, watered, and weeded some more. By the time they matured enough to produce the fruit, we were so excited to see a little red against the green. Unfortunately, at the bottom of those beautiful little tomatoes, they were rotten. We did however, produce a giant cucumber, but only one.

We tried again when we lived in Washington. We found what we thought would be a great place to plant a garden, but I'm not even sure those little green plants lasted more than a few days (something about uranium in those parts?). End of story.

Or maybe not?

We decided to give it a try, once again here in Illinois. 3rd time's the charm, right? We had a great little garden plot ready to go once the snow melted. After I got to know our urban farmer of a neighbor, she reassured my planning efforts of our garden. We decided on a few tomato plants, cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, zucchini, and watermelon. So, we planted. And waited. And watered. And weeded. And waited a little longer.

Then, all of the sudden our tomato plants (3 in all, one being a cherry tomato plant) sprang to life. They started to grow, and grow, and grow, and wouldn't stop. The plants got so big that they overtook their cages (wasn't that the purpose of the cage?) and ended up building a bigger, and better, support system for the ginormous vegetables. Then the tomatoes came. Thousands of them. (Maybe not thousands, but lots.) Our pepper plant also came to life and started to produce. The cucumber plant started to grow huge and viney (is that even a word?) with lots of yellow blossoms on it. So far so good.

It's not like we didn't have any obstacles in our way. The rabbits tried the jalapeno once. Just once.

After a few more weeks of waiting our harvest has begun. And guess what?

This time it worked!

This is what they looked like about 3 weeks ago.

**Yes, the picture at the top of the post is from our garden.**