Sunday 24 May 2009

Sun and Strawberries

What a lovely weekend! We have all been back in the garden, enjoying the sun, chasing butterflies, eating ice cream, re-potting plants, playing football and completing the rear raised beds. Garden Girl's finger is healing well so she was able to get her hands dirty and fill up some pots for the strawberry plants. Garden Boy joined in and I am very proud to announce that he managed to fill a whole plant pot with compost without even once trying to eat it. I wish I could remember what I had fed him for lunch.

Garden Dad has been working very hard at completing the rear raised bed but, as is often the way, the estimated couple of hours work has in reality been a couple of days. The structure is in place and he has started digging over the soil, so with a couple of evenings digging the two of us should have it ready to plant up next weekend. We are holding out to plant our peas next weekend as well, because our neighbours are replacing the fence and we wanted to avoid them getting trodden on.

Garden Girl has been particularly helpful pulling up weeds on the patio and the shadier side of the garden today. We have also managed to dig over the soil here ready to plant up with 'overflow'. It is the worst spot in the garden but rather than throw away those extra plants that don't fit in the raised beds we decided to give them a chance.


Meanwhile Garden Boy discovered that balls bounce. This occupied him for hours, the only trouble being that he has since been testing out if other things bounce when he picks them up and drops them. There has been a lot of crash, bang, splash and splat in our house.

The only real moment of distress was when Garden Girl spotted a strawberry that is starting to turn red and claimed it as her own. I (partially) jokingly said that all the strawberries were mine, to which Garden Dad replied they were all his, to which Garden Girl burst into tears because she just wanted the ones from the pot she had planted. Guilt ensued and the result is that we now all have a pot of our own to eat straight from the plant and all the rest must be brought inside to share. Garden Boy kept himself well and truly out of the argument; I strongly suspect he was secretly plotting to simply grab the fruit quietly and eat it all before the rest of us have a look in. But I am onto him.

2 comments:

  1. Hi - just to say I've enjoyed reading your blog. Just planted some strawberries plants this weekend too. My own garden kid wanted to grow strawberries from seed so had to tell a little story about how quickly the seeds had grown!

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  2. We picked our first red strawberry at the weekend. Of course, I didn't get a look in, my daughter is chief strawberry tester!

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