Gardening with Kids

The first year my husband and I were married Steve suggested we have a vegetable garden. His mom always had one but my mom, being a city girl, did not. So I was dubious but very ready to try something new. Besides, he said, it will help our grocery bill.

So the two of us set about transforming a garden plot. It was a community plot set aside for gardeners in the trailer park where we lived in Park City, IL. We really enjoyed going out there in the evenings to water, weed, and watch things grow.

When the kids came along I still continued to garden. I would bring the baby's walker and pop him in there while I worked. It got a little trickier when Rachael was born. Now there was a toddler and an infant to manage while I worked. But she was content to watch the goings on while Ben played in the dirt.

The kids always seemed to enjoy going to the garden with me. I couldn't spend hours there, of course, but snippets of time as their attention span allowed. They loved digging, and eventually picking and eating! Soon they wanted their own little plots.

One day I took the four of them to a Botanical Garden. Ben was enthralled. At age 10 he came home and asked if he could make his own Botanical garden. "Well," I told him, "there is a garden bed in the back of the house that I've never had time to develop. How about if we weed it and get it ready and then you can plant flowers there?" He was so excited.

Steve's mom came to help Ben. They worked and worked back there. She gave him some of her perennials and they went to a garden shop. Ben made a sign for his garden: Ben's Perennial Paradise. Now at age 28 he's an archaeologist and still loves to play in the dirt!

Our girls all loved flowers too. Rachael was enthralled with roses. Lydia, who is named for the Lydia in the Bible who was a seller of purple cloth, wanted to plant purple flowers. Anna had read a book about plants named for animals so she wanted to make a bed of animal-named flowers. She planted foxgloves, hen and chicks, lambs' ears, and cranesbill flowers.

There is so much to learn from gardening! Children learn hard work, patience, beauty, wonder, identification, etc. etc. etc. Happy Gardening!

And now for my latest sewing project...

I splurged and bought fabric from one of my favorite sewing bloggers, Sew Over It. It is a dusty pink with grey polka dots. It's a heavy cotton weight, perfect for this skirt:

 I chose a skirt pattern from New Look (#6326). It was easy to follow the directions. Skirt D looked like it would compliment the fabric best. It only took a few hours to put together.

And here it is again. I just love my garden!

Blessings!