Planting a Garden

We moved into our current home in September of 2007.  When we moved in there was a nice little garden plot that the previous owners had planted.  We were able to reap the benefits of their work that first fall, and we really quite enjoyed it.  We had never planted a garden before, but we have done so every year since then.  Two weeks ago was the day this year.  We were on a pretty tight time schedule that day and Christi was VERY sick, so I relied heavily on the older kids.  Taylor and Parker weeded the plot while I took Lexi, Elli and Sophi to Home Depot to get the seeds and starts that we needed along with some garden soil.  Once we got back Taylor and Xander helped me till the ground and add the new soil.  We all worked together to plant.  Parker planted a row of carrots on his own and worked with Lexi to plant a row of spinach.  Taylor planted radishes by himself, peas with Jesi and onions with Xander.  Graci , Xander and Jesi planted beets.  I worked with several of the kids to plant our tomato starts along with a couple of pepper plants and some basil.

Although it's a fair amount of work each year (and it would likely cost less money to just buy the produce at the store:), planting a garden has been a really rewarding experience for our family over the years.  The kids LOVE the fresh vegetables each summer and fall.  And it teaches good lessons about the value of work and the law of the harvest.  They all enjoy being a part of the planning process, deciding what will be planted.  Plus, we keep it small enough that they're not weeding all summer long:)

As a side note, the reason we were so rushed that day was because we had been invited to a cookout at the home of an old friend of mine.  As I mentioned above, Christi was under the weather.  So I took all the kids to the cookout by myself.  It went unbelievably well!  Without any prompting from me, the older kids really took it upon themselves to help me out since mom wasn't there.  They were so polite, so helpful with their younger siblings, and so good to volunteer help with clean up after the meal was done.  I was a proud papa!