Green things are afoot

This little sweetheart put in "his" garden today. Growing things together is one of our favorite family activities. The summer after he was two he took over the watering and hasn't looked back since. Nearly every morning last summer he popped out of bed and ran to check on our plants. There are so many kid projects that don't turn out the way I had envisioned them (paint on walls, whining about the 'fun' things I have planned, finishing projects myself, tears because the felt bantha was the wrong color of felt [I could go on and on-- but I'll save that whining for Nat]) that the success of gardening together is renewing.

He made the signs this year so we can remember what we planted where. I used what we had on hand; packing tape, cardstock and pipe cleaners (which Luke is now using to construct spy gear for himself and his little friend Tade). I love, love, love the handwriting and the phonetic spelling. My favorite perhaps is the spelling of Spinach (Spinich) or maybe the way the E's in Beets have so many lines (Luke's approach to writing E's is to fill the vertical line down with as many horizontal lines as possible-- a very successful E can have up to eight lines). I do, however, love the way Lettuce is written, "Letis" and the fact that the s is hovering above the rest of the word. Heck, I love it all. Can I really send this little one off to school where he will have to limit the lines his E's have?




And finally, what container garden is complete without a purple lightsaber to fend off bad guys (bees and squirrels)?