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Planting Day 2007 (old blog)

John finally has one Saturday at home between his many TDY trips and we're planting our garden - yahoo! We really wanted to involve the whole family but Christina is gone on her very long trip with our good friends having a blast in Minnesota. Mandie wasn't roped into the whole family gardening thing at an early enough age so she is out of the game plan.
My desire to plant an herb garden dramatically increased a day or two ago when we were out searching out our plants. I had already wanted to plant herbs but had no idea how cool it could be. We - Josh, Rachel and I - hit several local nurseries to compare prices and quality. I intentionally made the last one the little house on the side of the road between here and Troy. Last year it was the only place I could find my very much hunted tomatillas. It's just a house on the side of the road with a sign out on the highway saying plants ahead. They have built a small shack with shelves outdoors and they have a thick, heavy-duty, metal pipe dug deep into the ground with a slit so you can place your payment in there. It's completely on the 'honor system'. I suspected I would have to go there to find the tomatillas again so I'd been keeping an eye on the little shack every time I passed it by going to and from. But we had a bitter cold snap after Spring had sprung and many things that started their spring growth were lost so there wasn't much there for the first weeks I watched. Anyway, I drove north - taking a new road as a small adventure to find out where it would come out only to realize I had come out further north than I needed. We got clear to Troy and had to turn around and come back. I pulled into the little drive on the side of the road and looked briefly at the selection from the car. It didn't look promising and I saw a gentlemen in the yard behind the shack. I guessed it was the owner and I felt a bit awkward stopping while he was out (there usually was not a soul in sight). I pulled out, drove a short distance and decided I could be missing a great opportunity to learn something and meet someone really neat. I put aside my awkwardness and turned around and pulled into the drive again. This time I got out and walked up to take a look. The gentleman did, indeed, turn out to be the owner. Richard was a walking invitation to come and learn more. He took the kids and me both back into his green house to find the much sought after tomatillas and then proceeded to answer our multitudes of questions and let us taste some of the freely growing herbs in his yard - WOW! I learned so much and the kids really enjoyed their brief but very educational, spur-of-the-moment field trip.
So, I took that new understanding and my excitement and put it to good use. When we went to purchase our vegetable starts I also picked up many, many herb starts. I'm posting photos of the herb garden - my source of more joy and hopefully some growing wisdom.
I'll also post some photos of John and Rachel experiencing her first night crawlers! John was digging DEEP to plant one of our three new cherry trees and there were lots of the big wigglers. We gently put them in the raised bed with the pepper plants. Do your work wigglers! Some photos of the rest of the garden and the strawberry patch too.
Josh discovered the bird nests under the deck with mother bird sitting. I snapped the photo a day later when she wasn't there. We hope to have baby birds in the next few weeks. Some research needs to be done to find out how long it takes bird eggs to hatch!Spring and gardens, sunshine and rainstorms! I never knew how much I loved this time of year.

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