Gardening with the Kids

 We have been outside working in the gardens almost every afternoon (for 2-3 hours). This is such a huge part of our life right now, I just had to write a bit about that again.  I thought the girls looked particularly cute yesterday.  Yes, I let my girls garden in velvet dresses!!  They are looking intently for grubs because I mentioned that that they aren't good for the garden.  When I told them they could put the grubs in a jar to see what they turned into they were very excited.  ED was there for well over an hour and found at least 20 grubs!

The kids and I are getting a large vegetable garden ready (we already started some lettuce plants).
Below is a picture of the veggie garden. It was quite beautiful when we moved in last summer, but I had absolutely NO time to do anything about it in the fall.  In fact, it was so hectic and busy when we moved in that many of the beautiful tomatoes and red peppers rotted on the vine. :( This entire garden turned into one giant weed patch.  So, we've had a lot of catch up work this spring.  This photo was taken two weeks ago.  The black cloth is weed cloth to stop weeds from growing in the areas we had worked on.  Now two weeks later, pretty much the entire garden is weed free.

Today I/we finished clearing the weeds out of yet another bed (this picture to the left). The previous owners used it for tomatoes last year.   I think we might use for more berries (raspberries maybe?) since that's less work than a flower or veggie garden.  I can plant the bushes, spread mulch to stop the weeds and then do very little til it's time to drape over the nets.  

We should be getting our fruit trees in a couple of weeks.  We'll be planting two apple trees and a peach tree out on the side yard next to the driveway area.  Last weekend we planted 50 strawberry plants in another bed. 

We came upon this spider (a wolf spider, I think) holding her egg sac.  She fell off the trowel as I was moving her out of the garden onto the trash can lid and dropped her egg sac. She spent a minute or so hunting for her egg sac, then picked it and held it under her body.  We walked out into the woods to let her and her egg sac go (LD had very fond feelings about this spider because we so recently finished reading Charlotte's Web).

Do you garden?  Are you working hard on yours yet or you waiting for slightly warmer weather? I'm curious to see how many of you manage to balance gardening with homeschooling and all the other stuff.  I can tell you that other things have to slide when I'm devoting this much time outside.  But it sure is satisfying to work outside and to watch the kids enjoying the outdoors so much. And at this age, watching Mama spider carry and protect her egg sac is a valuable lesson, right?!