The 2nd Annual Wright Family Garden

We got our garden planted last weekend. Well, I shouldn't say we - Jay got our garden planted last weekend, with a little help from the rest of us. We really enjoyed our garden last year and are hoping to build on its success and have an even better harvest this year. With the help of a kind neighbor who took pity on Jay trying to till the garden with a woefully undersized rental tiller, we got it tilled a few weeks ago. And last Saturday Jay went to work. He planted tomatoes (in a spot up against the house as well as in the garden itself), several varieties of peppers, corn, potatoes, carrots, onions, cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, and a bunch of different herbs. He may have planted broccolli as well, but I don't remember. We have two pumpkin plants to put in, but we put them in another corner of the yard. And we have two rows of raspberry plants that we're hoping to get some raspberries from this year.

I would post a picture of what the garden looks like now, but it pretty much looks like a big patch of dirt with a few green plants sticking up. The kids keep forgetting where everything is planted so if they go into the garden they inevitably walk on top of a plant or two. But soon enough they'll be nice green sprouts coming up and it will be easy to get around to check on everything.

In conjunction with The Garden Project, we spent two Family Home Evening's discussing the reason that we garden. There are lots of reasons, actually - it's healthy, it saves money, it teaches us to work and plan and be responsible for growing something, and it's a good family project to have. William loves it. Tessa is enthusiastic. Henry, not so much. He wasn't happy when I informed him that he would be helping in the garden some this year. You would have thought that I had told him he was solely responsible for the upkeep and harvest between now and September. "But I don't like weeding", he wailed. I thought of so many sarcastic comments to make to him about all the things I don't like to do, but I refrained. Instead I informed him that garden maintenance was something that he would help with as a member of the family and that certainly he could take 20 minutes a week out of his busy schedule to pull a few weeds. We'll see how it goes.

So we're gardening again. Hooray. Hopefully we'll have a bountiful harvest with lots of yummy vegetables in a few months. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it all. Huh. Better start Googling.