Grandma's Visit! (May 3-5)

We packed a lot of fun into just a couple of days! Grandma was here for a purpose--as a "guest lecturer" to help us set up our first vegetable garden. She arrived Tuesday afternoon and was excitedly given a grand tour by the girls. We spent the afternoon hanging out, chitchatting, and starting to think about gardening things. Then she accompanied the girls and I to their first music lesson here. Her presence was invaluable! This music school is much bigger than their last one, and  I was supposed to be in three places at once!

That evening we pulled out the books and charts she brought, and really set to work planning the garden and writing our shopping list. We spent the next morning at Lowe's filling the trunk of my car with various bags of soils and tomato cages, every cup holder with a plant, and a small plastic bag with seeds and gardening gloves. We were set to go!

The girls and I spent a good part of the afternoon digging up the garden plot. Lion was a great little digger, and worked really hard to help me get it all turned over and broken up. Monkey and Bug did a little digging, but they quickly decided it was more fun to rescue earthworms (which they kept in a flower pot with some dirt until the worms could continue doing their good work in our garden) and to kill "greedy grubs."

We topped off the day with swimming lessons, followed by Wednesday night supper and a hymn sing at our new church. This was particularly fun to take Grandma along to because there were still people who remember her from when she was a member decades ago! (I have to admit it's fun--and a little weird--to be in a church where people remember me as a preschooler!)

The next morning the real planting began! We put down hardware cloth to keep out the moles we discovered at the other end of the yard, mixed in the gardening and topsoil (Lion and I had to make another run for a few more bags, while Monkey and Bug stayed to help Grandma pour it in), and planted our plants! That day we planted three pepper plants, three sweet potato plants, and four tomato plants. The girls were great gardeners: they helped cut off the pots and followed instructions about how deep and wide to dig and much of the plant to bury. It was a bit of a chilly, wet day so we decided to go inside for hot tea and hold off on planting the seeds until we had nicer weather. (We have since planted cucumbers, cilantro, and basil.)

The girls have been diligently checking on and when necessary watering our garden. I'll confess now to having a black thumb. The girls are really excited, though, so I hope we can pull this off!