Well, I'm pretty proud of myself I must say. Earlier this week, Aaron had Jay (one of our employees) till up an area of my garden so that I can plant some spring seeds such as lettuce, spinach, kale, etc. My sister, Amanda, suggested that I use a method that she and her husband use to garden called the square foot method, so I'm giving it a shot. Basically, here's how you do it. I took the handle of some various tool that I found in the basement that's 5 feet long. I marked it off in 1 foot lengths and headed to the garden to mark off my grid pattern. I measured a square 4' x4' and then marked THAT into 1' sections so now I had 16 1' squares. In each square, you poke a certain number of holes and plant your seeds according to what kind it is. For example, you put 4 kale seeds inside each square or 9 spinach seeds or 16 radish seeds inside each square. It all depends on how big the plant will grow as to how many seeds you put in each square. So on Wednesday, with the help (or hindrance) of Savannah and Alan, we got one 4' x 4' grid planted in kale. Then last night, I planted another section with spinach. This morning, once again, with the dear little children's help (in the form of Alan's foot prints!!!) I planted a whole section of mesclun (a variety of different lettuces and kale and spinach all in one) mix and then I tookone whole 16 sq. ft. section to plant 3 different kinds of radishes and some cress. I've never planted or eaten cress, so I decided to start small with it. It also matures in only 10 days! so I can plant more if we love it. Savannah really DID help in the garden as she got the wagon and hauled off two full loads of rocks out of the garden and to the rock pile down in the pine trees. She did it without even having to be asked or complaining about it! Meanwhile, Alan, as I said, walked where he shouldn't have been walking and dumped out some of my radish seeds. I've always had this little fantasy of my children and I going out to garden and having so much glorious fun and them learning so many things. Well, I don't know if I just don't have the patience or if they just haven't reached that age yet, but I'm still hoping that one day that we will experience this wonderful time that I have pictured in my mind! The reason WHY I'm proud of myself for doing all this is that number one, as much as I enjoy fresh produce and growing my own stuff, I must admit that I don't LOVE gardening by myself. It's not much fun. Add to that the fact that I'm 36 1/2 weeks pregnant and I don't have a ton of energy and FORGET stooping over. So I do what I can do standing up straight, then I sit down on my butt and scoot around in the dirt like a little kid and plant the seeds. It's not extremely easy, but even if I don't get anything else planted this year, I'm satisfied with what I've done so far. I'm not going to be the high achiever that I have been in years' past!
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