Gardening Parties

For the past several years, we have been planning on having a gardening party with Michael, Alicia and their children; Katie and Jackson. However, every time we have tried to get together, something has come up. This year, however, was a success! We planned ahead and last Monday (a week ago) we were able to have them over to plant a garden. We started the day with a trip to Strawberry Farms to pick out the plants. It was so funny watching the kids! Jackson's contribution mostly included rocks he found on the ground as we walked among the isles of plants. Katie picked out all kinds of plants...even ones she does not eat, like cabbage. The highlight of this part of the day for the kids was definitely the baby chicks that were in the checkout area. Once we got back to the house, we had to keep first things first! The bug hunt! Katie had brought along her bug catcher and just had to look for worms. It was so funny. She got so excited when she found one (which was not very hard) but refused to touch it herself. Jackson, on the other hand, had no qualms about picking the worms up. So, it became kind of a team effort. Then, Andrew gave Katie his gloves, and she was able to pick them up also. Once we found enough worms, it was time to get down to business. Katie picked up the 6-pack of tomatoes and set them on the garden. Then she mounded up some dirt around them and decided it was done. :) We all thought it was cute. It took a while (Katie kept wanting to stop to look at the cats and look for worms), but we got everything planted that we wanted to that day. Jackson was too caught up with the cats, the toy car, and the hoe (an emergency room visit waiting to happen) to actually do any planting. Maybe next year. After we finished planting, we went to the park behind our house for a picnic. We had such a great time!
We had originally invited David, Sandi and their children; Caden and Chase, to come and garden with us at the same time, but they were sick, so we saved some of the planting for this week. On Monday (two days ago) they all came over and we started in on our planting. We wondered if Caden would be too young to enjoy it, but he jumped right in. Caden listened to everything Andrew told him and was a big help. He was so serious about the whole thing. It was so cute! He does not like to get dirty (according to Sandi), so we gave him some gloves (they were a little too big). After the planting was done, we set up a little bon fire in the back yard. Andrew had read on Sandi's blog how Caden had wanted to build a fire when they camped out in their back yard a few weeks ago, but they could not because of Columbia regulations. So, we had hotdogs over the fire and then S'MORES to finish it up. Caden was amazed by the fire. He would try to help with the cooking, but would get too hot and decide he was done for a while.
All in all, both gardening parties were a complete success! We can't wait to have them back to see the progress of their plants through the summer and for future picking and canning parties!

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