Giving a Garden a go again

Every year I promise to never waste time, effort or money on gardening-related supplies or activities again. It is so much cheaper and easier to go buy veggies at the store here in our limited growing season and climate. And every year the weather starts to warm up, we pass by the seed displays in the stores, and I go back on that promise. Perhaps it is related to sentimentality from my childhood growing up with a bountiful garden that grew well on our family's rich, midwestern farm soil, especially with its adequate helping of fresh cow manure applied every spring. Or maybe it goes all the way back to God's directions to Adam to care for the earth and is an inherent part of humanity to put a tiny seed in the ground and see it sprout forth into something big. Part of it for me, is wanting my children to see where their food comes from and have the pleasure of eating something they grew. Whatever the case may be, this is our LAST effort. (ha, ha, ha)



Our soil is basically rock, it is a mountainous desert climate, and our growing season is about 2 and 1/2 months long from frost to frost. So if we miss a day or two of watering, it's a bust. If we plant a week too early, same deal. Point being, it is a tremendous challenge to grow anything here.


After checking out and perusing the All New Square Foot Gardening book from the library, we decided to attempt that this year and see if we had any greater success. Sure hope it pays off because it ended up being a bit of an investment of time and money. In a small way it has already been worth it, for what happened last night while we were putting the first seeds in the beds. (It is still a month away from our average last frost, but the pea and spinach packages said they could tolerate a little of that.) First we planted some peas. The kids were asking about the seeds.

"They look like the peas we eat but smaller."
"They are like the peas we eat, but these ones were saved and dried and stored for planting and growing more peas instead of packaged for eating."


Little G helped with the spinach and lettuce seeds.
"It is amazing that God makes things grow from these tiny seeds."



We have also gone for walks near dusk the past few nights and were delighted to see some elk Saturday night. The kids have really been into these walks so hopefully we can make more of a habit of it for the summer. We all NEED it! B commented while we were walking around the ponds last night, "Thank you God for your amazing creation and the frogs!" Two encouraging comments from two different kids in one day!