21 to 0

We picked 21 cherry tomatoes today.

Not one of them made it home.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.

~ Lewis Grizzard

The snack garden?

We've been hanging out in the garden. The kids eat the cherry tomatoes and the peas and beans faster than I can grow them. We've taken to calling it the snack garden. I am not convinced I will ever manage an actual meal from it unless we plan to eat it in the garden - nothing makes it home.
We water and weed and I take pictures of flowers and weed some more. The kids eat, climb the trees, chase butterflies, call to the birds, play in the fairy garden and annoy help the neighbours. And I weed some more.  Then we all go home and wish we had more cherry tomatoes and raspberries to eat.

Our Morning Routine

For the last few days we've been getting up early, grabbing breakfast, and heading off to the garden. When we go by bike, which we have been trying to do more regularly recently, we stop off for a snack of blackberries at the bushes by the river. Then it's off to the garden to see what's new. The kids help me inspect and water and then they head off to gather raspberries or play in the fairy garden while I weed and putter. We stop for (another) snack - often a version of these and then head off home for lunch and hopefully an afternoon adventure. I must admit I like the mellowness of these mornings, the small amount of work we do together before the day gets hectic and the time we spend caring for this slightly wild and always wonderful space.

Easy being green

Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy.
~Astrid Alauda

We're taking daily trips to the garden to weed, water, wander, watch, wait and wonder.

There isn't a tonne of work to do just now in our little space. After the watering and the tiny bit of weeding, we're not quite ready to go. So I've been working on one of the communal raspberry patches, trimming it back and thinning it out in hopes of being able to get more berries this summer.   The kids are less interested in pruning prickly branches and so they escape to a corner of the garden where they are building a secret fairy garden in among the sumacs.  When they tire of that they count bees, search for strawberries in the wild patch in our plot, climb the tree, twist bindweed into rope, lay on their backs in the sun or the shade and dream to the music of the birds.

I've been doing a bit of dreaming of my own. I wanted to create the garden space for them. I love the looks on their faces as they run to the garden to discover what's changed since the last visit.  I am looking forward to the days when we are harvesting "real food" and dinner, has come, at least in part, from our garden.

What I didn't count on quite so much was how much I would love it. It is immensely satisfying to putter about, picking a weed here or there, showing the kids how to snap suckers from the tomato plants and build bean teepees. I've been picturing salads made with greens from the garden, sliced tomatoes, some fresh raspberries on yogurt, little hands helping me harvest red currants and elderberry and mint for suntea. I have at least a dozen gardening books out of the library.  I've been thinking about chickens and bees and blueberry bushes and 1/2 acre lots. I've been wondering if the neighbours would notice if I moved the fence 20 feet or so west to commandeer a patch of land with some sun and a spot for a coop and a hive.  Maybe they would trade for eggs, honey and berries, and some time in our garden.