How Does Your Garden Grow?

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. After my last post, one might think I would not be planting anything for a while, but one does not know me very well if one thinks that. I am not a quitter. heh!

Actually, Ellie has a new project going and her first task is gardening. Also, for school I wanted to incorporate a butterfly garden into our birds and insects study, since the last chapter is on butterflies. Therefore, she and I worked very hard all day on her new butterfly and hummingbird garden.

First, we had to get all of the weeds out of the neglected flowerbed along our garage. It is really strange how neglected this particular flowerbed was, since it is a focal point of our backyard and we see it right outside the window from our kitchen and living room. It helped that a big rose bush blocked the view of the rest of the bed when I saw it from the kitchen. I could focus on all of those pretty knock-out roses and pretend the rest looked just as good. But the truth is, I couldn't seem to figure out what to do with it, so it sat. And got weedy. And it was a long, weedy dirt bed with one beautiful rose bush on one end.

Pretty.




As Ellie was working, she kept commenting about how it was like going into a jungle. A jungle that came up to her ankles - but a jungle nonetheless. At least it made the weeding more exciting for her. It gave her a great sense of accomplishment to finish that task (with my help, of course). She felt good about how many times she filled up her weed bucket and had to empty it. The better she felt about her hard work, the worse I felt about how bad I let the weeds get. It's okay - that's why we were out there. Gettin' stuff done and checking it off my to-do list. Oh, and teaching my kids about butterflies. I love school projects that involve marking things off my to-do list!

Then, it was off to Arbor Gate to buy plants. Did we measure the flowerbed and carefully plan what plants to buy and where we were going to plant them? No. We picked the ones we thought were pretty and stopped when our little red wagon was full. I think that's the best way to do it. Are you surprised my last garden was a flop? When we got home, we moved them around and decided where they would look best. Then, we planted them before our dog ate them. We'll get a few more plants to fill in the gaps, and then we just need to lay down some mulch.

What butterfly garden would be complete without Butterfly Bush?

Here are some plants that I don't remember the name of. We wrote them in the garden journal, though. Yes, we now have a garden journal. grin.





Here's the whole flowerbed. I can't wait until the plants start growing and filling the whole place up. See the pretty rose bush at the end?

Ellie is so proud of all of her hard work today. I love watching my kids work hard for something and feel good about it. She should feel good. It was stinkin' hot today!