Order In Chaos

Today is…Wednesday May 4 2011

Our gospel lesson was about wolves and sheep, and why we need to stay close to the Shepherd to stay safe.

In the morning, my house was eerily quiet:

My friend took Giant and Ettin to play, whilst I had the morning to play do filing:

Galoot helped me sort, of course:

In the afternoon, Giant made castles:

And we found a dirty old die in the garden, which the boys were delighted about. We simply had to play games with it:

So we got out the sticker shapes grandma had sent us:

And awesome eraser shapes:

And played and played and played!

a sickness

It’s a sickness.

MUST. DIG. IN. DIRT.

MUST. PLANT. SEEDS.

I just can’t help myself.

After the snow on the weekend, I came up with some fun new ideas in my garden!

Which involve planting 3 flats of corn…

1/2 flat of squash, and 1/2 flat of cucumbers:

I want to try some “Three Sisters” plantings—corn, beans, and squash planted helpfully together. And since I can’t plant the corn outside yet, I thought I’d start them now.

(the cucumbers will be growing on their own)

…Admittedly, I may need to buy some more grow lights….

Today is Monday…May 2 2011

Waking up to beautiful sunshine, I’m afraid I didn’t want to do anything else but garden.

Fortunately, my friend called and got us out to the gym.

So we took our kids, ran around a bunch and had a delightful time.

Afterwards, we came back to my house, and she dug around in my garden with me…:)

Daddy fed boys and took them “speedbiking” at lunch time while I went to pick up some more seed trays.

Then the boys were so happy playing in the backyard I just kept digging.

Until…

One boy, who had been gym-running, garden-digging, speedbiking, outside-playing all morning,..

quit.

Absolutely, utterly exhausted:

Yes, asleep. Though I did wonder briefly if he’d succumbed to heat exhaustion after insisting on wearing his winter coat and gloves in wonderfully warm weather 😉

So I left my resident superhero…

…watching over his grass-eating strawberry-mauling brother while I carried Ettin to bed.

(I blame that bib-less casualty on his father, I was out at lunch!)

Not able to garden outside, Giant and I did some more planting inside.

He set up the trays while I nursed a baby:

We planted all manner of fun veggies:

He practiced his writing skills and wrote down labels for me:

After planting, we snuggled on the couch for a few stories:

…and practiced his math by reading the page numbers (no, really, he loves doing this!)

And I felt very blessed as I reflected upon the day, and enjoyed my sweet view:

Garden Lessons

While weeding in the garden, Giant and I talked about how the weeds grew.

Sometimes, all you see is a little green tip. It doesn’t look that harmful at all!

But connected to that little green tip is a long and pernicious root, which will run over the whole garden if left unchecked:

I told Giant that there are choices in our lives like that root. Choices that don’t seem so bad—a little lie, or taking something that’s not really yours, or saying an unkind word. But choices that could lead to more bad choices. Choices which might hurt our garden, ourselves.

At the edge of the garden was a patch of this grass. Theoretically, we could have left it in and said we’ll watch it carefully. We’ll make sure it stays put and doesn’t take over the garden. But with just a little neglect it would have snuck in and sent out it’s roots. I told Giant that this was like why we don’t have a tv in our home. Its just too hard to say we’d only ever watch good stuff on it. Some bad things will sneak in.

And they wouldn’t even look so harmful. At first.

Better to root out the weeds we see, so we are better able to deal with the challenges of our garden.

garden pots

So, I tried making newspaper pots over the weekend.

I realized late Saturday night that I may need some more growing space, so I set about making pots…

An hour later, I had enough pots to fill a tray.

$3 for a flat of pressed paper pots. 1 hour for a flat of newspaper pots.

If I had more time, I’d make the newspaper pots.

But I certainly prefer the pressed paper pots for their ease and convenience!