Seedtime and harvest.....

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22

Specifically the seedtime. Harvest is still several months off, obviously.

Usually our seedtime is a month or so away as well, but this year? Jason is able to be home more which means that the garden gets tilled earlier which means that the ground dries out earlier which means that the garden gets planted earlier.

How's that for a run-on sentence from someone who claims to love the English subject? Grin. Everyone lapses occasionally in their proper grammar.

Anyway.

Last week we actually took my Grandma's advice and planted some of the early stuff. It's already coming up. I think it's spinach. Or maybe lettuce. Really, I don't know. I just think it's so amazing that you can plant a teensy little seed and less than a week later there's a little plant popping through the soil.

Getting the tiller out was a huge deal. Amazingly, it started right up. The children were enamored.

They even pulled up chairs to perch on the sidelines when he started working the ground.

Then the fun began. The seeds were gotten out of their little bags and dumped into little containers. The seed planters were thrilled!!! This was the first year that they actually proved to be helpful while planting the garden. One whole row of peas was planted by them while Jason cheated and used the planter thingy for the other two!! I don't think they even noticed.

And Jack? Well. He loves to work in the garden. However, his idea of working and my idea of working are two entirely different things.

I missed the picture of him with the mud smeared all over his face and inside his mouth. He got it rubbed off on his sleeve before I could grab the camera.

The children were so pleased with their row of peas. Let's hope that they are just as pleased when it comes time to harvest and shell them this summer!!!

Next up was the onions. Lots of onions. Way more onions than I thought would ever make their way onto our property. You see, when we got married nearly eight years ago I couldn't even tolerate the sight of an onion. Jason loved them. LOVED them. He was used to lots of onions in everything. I was used to onions in nothing. Somewhere in the past eight years he has converted me into an onion lover. Granted, I still don't eat them raw as he does, but I do pile them into the cooked food.

If they survive, we should have onions sticking out our ears.

The rest of the garden was way, way too muddy to even consider planting. Plus, it's pretty early yet.

And thus began our gardening venture for 2011. Jason claims that it's gonna be a big one since he can help this year. I say go for it. As long as he truly can continue to help!

Gardening isn't really my thing. I don't like to get my hands dirty. I don't like to pull weeds. I really don't enjoy spending hours in the garden picking the produce.

But, oh how I love having that fresh produce. How I love to preserve it and use from it all winter. How I love knowing that if we happen to run out of money for groceries my hard work the last summer would pay off.

What a blessing to be able to have a garden. Even if I don't particularly care for the keeping up of it.

PS. The onions that we planted? Well. I guess we shouldn't have planted them yet. The morning after we planted them (that'd be Saturday morning) we went out to find most of them uprooted and lying on top of the ground. No biggy. We stuck them back in. Sunday morning we went out to check it again....and they were right back on top of the ground. No tracks to show that some four legged creature is digging them up. Instead, there are a kazillion little worm holes. Ever had a problem with worms pushing your stuff right out of the ground?! The onions are still lying on top of the ground. I must do something about that today.....