The Doomed Garden

When we bought our house a year ago, our master gardener neighbor came by and asked us if we planned to start a vegetable garden. Hmmm, let's see, there's a fabulous idea! Our yard is so lush already! With all the, uh, weeds, and that one bush currently burned to a crisp. But hey, I could totally have a--what do you call that? A green finger?? As time wore on, the pressure did too. What the what?? Is this some type of necessity?!?! I'm in the business to make my life easier peeps! There's this thing called a grocery store that sells vegetables super duper cheap. Let's just be honest here...half the time I'm too lazy to make a salad because the lettuce doesn't come chopped. But nevertheless the garden idea was planted into my foolish brain and in Kate Danze fashion I went to the library to check out as many gardening for idiots books as possible. That's when it all started. These books said that the only thing these so called vegetable plants needed was dirt, sun, and water to grow. PAH! Easy Peasy! It's not like they ever taught me this very valuable information in grade school or by means of that whole degree thingy in something called elementary education.

Awesome. I will dominate this garden and add yet *another* gold star to my glistening mommy belt. My brilliant children will go to prek with an entire knowledge of plant life cycles and photosynthesis. My brother-who-started-a-roof-garden-in-NYC-and-lived-off-the-produce-for-like-a-year gave us his magical seeds and Eli tilled(ish) the soil. Too easy! Bring on the hard stuff! Emily and Leo were so excited that they dragged out a couch to lay on.

See! I told-ya they were thrilled!

Since I'm never ever ever meticulous about anything , this would be a very relaxing family fun activity. Emily and Leo will dress in their garden attire and prace around the garden singing merrily "the farmer sews his seed" in harmony. Upon completion, Eli and I will sit back and bask in the glow of our newest home project. Ahh, it would be beautiful.

Planting Day came. A master-gardener in training, naturally I mapped out exactly which seeds would go where. I carefully explained to Emily how to delicately place the seeds exactly where Daddy was pointing his finger. We were so organized! I would hand out the seeds, and Eli would show the sweet angels where to put them. We were ready to get started. Emily began to follow directions. Oh, the sweetness. But then, oh no, oh nonononono, approximately 0.1 seconds later, it was all over. Leo snatched the seed envelope and Emily followed suit, all conspiracy-like, and they commenced a ferocious seed throwing party. All of the next 30 seconds were spend by Eli and I floundering, screaching, and frantically trying to save the seeds. *Sigh* *Double sigh* I think we ended up with about 100 seeds in a 4x8 garden box. I sat watching the madness as Eli tried to pick up seeds the size of a grain of sand and the crazies jumped around for joy. Mommy fail.

So the beauty of planting seeds are that they sprout ever so soon and come with a name tag distinguishing them from their look alike weed friends too. How convienent. Well, we waited. And waited. And the kids were sooo excited to see what would come up (and by kids I really mean just me). By some miracle by the grace of God we had some plants that hey, I recognized!!

To the left is broccoli, middle is tomato, and right are corn stalks. Swoon. (And yes, that there's a soaker hose, because we're all fancy-like)
But hold the phone! Recently more little guys have sprouted and wouldn't ya know, we could tell what those mini veggies are too. We've got cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and watermellon growing. Woohoo! Mommy win!