Sunday, April 20, 2008

Digging in the Dirt

It was almost a month ago that we started those seeds, and to be perfectly honest, it hasn't gone so well. I gave up on the lettuce, spinach, and romaine because it got too leggy. I accidentally left the peas outside too long when I was trying to get them used to the sun, and they totally wilted. The squashes, watermelon, and cucumber are doing well, though, and the tomatoes are so-so. I think that starting next weekend I can start hardening them off, then they'll go out into the garden. Two weeks ago we transfered them into bigger pots and the boys were pretty impressed with their extensive root systems. They really enjoyed helping out with that, too, and we made a giant muddy mess on the dining room table.

We got a lot of work done outside this weekend. It was gorgeous so we did lots of raking, pruning, and general picking up. I'd also spent a lot of time working in the garden beds earlier this week and finished it all up this weekend. I've got (what will be) 40 lettuce plants, 32 romaine, 108 spinach, 128 carrots, and 12 peas. I've been watering the plots and hopefully we should see some seedlings emerge this week. The boys have had a lot of fun playing in the backyard and helping me when they feel like it - they dig with their trowels, they drop seeds into the holes I make, and they love to water. My strawberry plants did pretty well over the winter, too, so hopefully those will start producing in another two months or so.

This week coming up is supposed to be super nice, as well, so hopefully we can finish off cleaning up the backyard. We're also finally feeling healthy again (after two very long, miserable weeks), and our library books are way past due, so we'll have to at least drop them off tomorrow, and hopefully make a trip to get new ones quite soon. We may be meeting up with Jen and her boys tomorrow, and we'll try to get together with some other friends this week, too.

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