Planting Flowers for Earth Day

The kids and I ran out this morning to buy a couple flowers to plant for Earth Day.  We have flower seeds to plant (we'll do that this afternoon), but I wanted the kids to be able to see the finished product from the seed, too.  Plus, you can never have too many flowers.

We had to plant them in the front yard to avoid our dog stomping all over them, and there is really only one spot in the front of the house that would get sun.  Since there are already bulbs in there, the kids just dug around them in open spaces to plant their new yellow and purple flowers.

Ellie was very proud of herself for planting the flowers!

I'm pretty sure every flower received about 10x the amount of necessary water thanks to Aaron!

The kids mostly worked together, which is always nice!

Here are my proud little people!  They had so much fun digging in the dirt (which they do everyday anyway), but they've never planted already-grown flowers before, so it was extra special for them today!

What fun activities have you done today for Earth day?

Our Lettuce Experiment

We've been living in our current home since July (so almost 4 months).  I was super excited when we moved in because there are two HUGE garden planting areas.  One is in the front, and one stretches across the back fence.  

We moved in and got all settled, and then I quickly realized...they were in the shade!  Super sad face.  You see, we have these huge trees that provide lots of shade in our backyard.  That's really nice of course, but when it comes to planting, it's definitely not ideal.  The angle of the house prevents the front box from being the sun, too.  And so I got to work making myself a planter box for some plants I'd been growing in pots.  

After about a month in the house, I had this idea.  "Let's just plant all the seeds we had still in those planter boxes and see what happens".  The girls and Aaron were more than excited to dig in the dirt and help me clean up the space.  We planted all sorts of things and then waited to see what would happen.

Now remember, the space in front of my house does not see an ounce of light all day.  And guess what happened?  Stuff totally grew!  I've never had luck with lettuce (too hot here in the summer), but it seems as though the shade cooled it off just enough to allow it to flourish!  The zuccini did very well, however it did not produce any fruit by the time it froze last night (it did flower though!).  Carrots also did great in the shade (but still too small since we planted so late).

My conclusion:  Certain plants do excellent in the shade!  Next year that planting space will be filled with lettuce and carrots!  I can't believe stuff grew there, but it did!  And now I have a bowl of lettuce for salads this week ;)