There's always a first time.

We are nearing the end of the first week at Heritage CDC in 16 years without our beloved Ms. Bama.  It has been a week of reflection and time to remember our sweet friend through stories and sharing memories and although it has been tough at times, there have been more smiles than tears in our first week without her.  We miss you already.

The first delivery of our summer produce will be next week.  The hot weather has not been kind to our cucumbers, they really seem to be struggling in the heat.  The peppers however, seem to be loving the sunshine.  We will have quite the haul for the Forest Park Ministry Center with serrano peppers, banana peppers, green bell peppers and cayenne peppers.  It's been fun to see the different varieties as they have bloomed.  Trying to be patient to watch green things turn red has been tough and trying to explain to 3 year olds that it's "not ready to pick" makes me feel like a broken record. 

Our first time to harvest our herbs will be next week also.  I've been doing a little research on trimming rosemary to use straight from the bush.  I'm hesitant because I'm not really sure how much to trim...but hey, there's a first time for everything, right?

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember, and there is pansies, that's for thoughts."  ~ Shakespeare



http://www.ehow.com/how_8182887_use-rosemary-off-bush.html

Baby it's hot outside.

I think it rained just about every day the week of June 11th.  I don't think it has rained since and the plants are starting to show it.  With the help of the Bluebirds and Robins we've watered the garden but the cucumbers are just not coming in yet.  We have a few banana peppers, a couple of green peppers and our cherry tomatoes are doing okay.  Keep your fingers crossed that we are blessed with a cool rain very soon...our rain barrel is getting low too!

Sophmore Season

It's our second spring planting and we are hot! hot! hot!  No, seriously, we're hot.  We have a cayenne pepper plant, a red chili pepper plant and a serrano pepper plant.  We also planted green peppers and banana peppers and for that odd bit of flavor a white eggplant.  Here's the kicker...I just found out that if you plant hot peppers near mild or sweet peppers they will be hot also.  So guess who is going to have spicy banana peppers, spicy green peppers and spicy white eggplant?  Yep...us, but I don't think the families at the Forest Park Ministry Center will mind.  They might just appreciate a little spice in their usually sweet and mild dinners.

It's also our second season of composting.  We were able to fortify all of our pots with our homemade fertilizer and evidently some of the seeds in the compost survived the break down phase.  We have 2 tomato plants, a pumpkin and 5 or 6 squash plants coming up in the most unusual places.  What can we say?  We love to surprise ourselves!

New additions to our garden for this spring.  We put a bigger pot around the base of our butterfly bush.  It's looking awfully proud and standing tall as the center of our garden.  We created 2 strawberry "fountains" and lined the sidewalk with impatiens.  The DandyLion class of 2012 each chose and planted an impatien as a way to say "so long!" to the CDC.

If you get a moment, walk out the back door and look to your right as you walk down the sidewalk.  See some of the wonderful things that God is doing and your children are discovering this spring at Heritage CDC.

Time to wake up the earth...

Soon it will be
Time to welcome, to
Ripen and sweeten
And so we
Wait for the
Berries we love to
Enter the garden
Red and juicy
Red and sweet
Yes!  we have STRAWBERRIES!

Seriously...we have strawberries in the garden...welcome spring!

And we're out...for now.

We have just completed our first year of summer and fall gardening.  Woot! Woot!  We harvested 6 small heads of cabbage, two handfuls of cilantro and a couple dozen short stubby carrots and delivered our haul to the Forest Park Ministry Center on Wednesday of last week.  Overall I give our first garden a B+.  As we evaluate the learning garden I think we will find that we achieved some of our goals and missed on a few as well.  There are plenty of areas to expand on what we did right and improve on what didn't go so right.  I'm proud of our children and their hard work and willingness to help in the garden any time we asked.  I'm looking forward to how much better our garden will be in 2012.

In February and March we will be continuing to build our compost so the soil for April's planting will be rich and full of nutrients.  So keep the egg shells, used coffee grounds and raw vegetable peelings headed our way!

Just go for it.

We have carrots!  Okay...I have to be honest.  I had given up on these little guys.  I wasn't seeing any real progress the last couple of weeks.  Now, I read articles and watched videos on growing carrots and every one of them stressed the need to "thin out" the carrots.  I get the idea and understand the importance on removing weaker plants to give room for the stronger plants to grow.  I guess I became emotionally attached to each seed as I planted it and can't bear the thought of it not realizing it's potential to be a carrot.  But today, with the help and support of one of my gardening friends, I just went for it.  I dug in there and started pulling out the little stalks and left as many big stalks as I could.  I guess in a couple of weeks we'll see if I made the right decisions.  What a lesson in life...how do you know if you are making the right decisions?  We can read all of the books and watch great videos but really when it comes down to it we all need common sense and a loving friend to tell you to just go for it.  If I had a New Year's resolution to consider it would be to not spend as much time overthinking things.  I think I'd like a year of just going for it.  Who knows what great things might happen?

BTW...just in case you were wondering about the watermelon...the first frost was not kind to our watermelon vine.  Definitely not a fall plant.

Cabbages, carrots and watermelons? Oh my!

Fall is my favorite time of year at Heritage CDC.  There is a nip in the air, the leaves are changing colors and we get to go on field trips to the Fire Station and the Pumpkin Patch.  This year, we are adding to our fun and learning by having a fall garden.  At the end of September, the DandyLions Kindergarten class worked to empty the compost bin and helped fertilize the soil for our containers.  By the end of our "work day" we had planted 8 cabbages, filled 3 large containers with carrot seeds and found a bazillion worms.  (Remember that worm farm I wanted?  Patience pays off sometimes.)  The Rockin' Robins and Boppin' Bluebirds began taking turns watering the garden and will begin observing and recording the growth of our cabbages and carrots next week.  Fall is my favorite time of year and I'm excited to say this may be the best one yet!

Oh and remember the pumpkin we grew by accident?  Evidently a watermelon seed was dropped in the corner of the garden and now we have a watermelon vine growing like crazy.  Will watermelons grow in the fall?  We're about to find out!