Garden

Today Lavella woke up throwing up and with a terrible case of...well, there's been some rather horrific diaper changes. It's best not to speak of it. She's vomited 4 times now, eaten once, and she and I have changed clothing all through the day to keep up with her output. Pretty much she just wants to be in my arms non-stop, and she's taken two naps, since she's also running a fever. At the moment she's collapsed against my chest, sleeping. Poor babe. I'll lay her down in her crib again, because I hear Jonah waking up now. I need more arms.

Moving on to more pleasant topics:

For quite a while now I've been longing for a garden. Unfortunately, the living situations we'll be living in for the next bunch of years will not likely lend themselves to gardening and the like. This year, however, I discovered a company selling self-irregating pots (The Garden Patch), and realized that it was the answer to my dilemma. A garden that can move with me! Perfect.

We got the pots in the mail a few weeks ago.





(This ponytail slays me)

And these seeds from Gurney's.



On Monday and Tuesday we visited a nearby nursery and purchased 13 bags of this soil. I can only wonder what the neighbors thought as they peered out their windows at me and watched me carry bag after bag inside. Up two flights of stairs.



I very nearly bought a bunch of bags of manure instead (I had a stuffy nose and was working quickly to load our cart), but thankfully Andrew's stellar nose sniffed out the problem before we got to the checkout.

During naptime on both days, Andrew and I worked at assembling the pots, and got them all planted. (We weren't able to fit zucchini, brussels sprouts and broccoli, but managed to get everything else in!)



(Click on the picture to get to the page on Flickr, then hover your mouse over the pic for notes on what and where we planted everything.)

When Elijah woke from his nap, he helped Andrew carry gallons of water across the house from the kitchen to the sun-room to fill the reservoirs under the pots. They probably worked, happily, for an hour or more, until they had exhausted themselves. Such good little workers. They were terribly excited that they could actually help with something.



Our salad greens and spinach have already showed their little leafy starts, and the boys are very proud of their job of checking on the reservoirs every day to see if they need topping off.

We will eventually move these outside to the porch. I'm so excited to be able to have herbs and some vegetables literally outside my kitchen window. It may not be organic (yet), but you can't beat the distance from "farm" to table.