Share Your Garden! My Zero-Work Garden, Giant Zucchini and Second Year Eggplant

“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising, and then after all, little by little, it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.” ~ Gertrude Stein

Keyhole – Week 2

A New Year: Looking Up, Looking Back, and Plugging In

“Let the world wag.” ~ John D. Rockefeller

Nurturing Soil: Getting The Most Of A Summer Hour

Summer Garden
My ‘Green’ Children

Homemade Dirt Lasagna, Feeding Worms

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ~ Margaret Atwood

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Mish Mash Monday – March 2

“The skin of the earth is the most important of the minerals.” ~ Wangari Maathai

Vacation is for the Birds

East Glacier — Sun Peeps Through

“This is Nature’s own reservation, and every lover of wildness will rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended.” ~ John Muir, Our National Parks

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Hey, peeps.  We’re back, and what a refreshing vacation that was.

It was essentially a repeat of last year, with the notable addition of five days in Glacier National Park — a place we’d been itching to get back to since last August.  We also spent a good amount of time in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks as well.

What with another 5,000+ miles on the Hummer, just about every memorable detail of the most awesome LEGO Movie is now permanently etched into my subconscious.  (How our parents survived road trips without DVD’s, I’ll never know.)  And thank goodness for Dramamine, which kept our two kids with motion sickness well and rested.

Needless to say, it didn’t suck.   Okay.  Now, your questions.

Iron Man and Christmas Trees

How To: Stealing, Hoarding and Making Soil

The phrase “working mother” is redundant.”  ~ Jane Sellman

Talking Dirt

“Good gardening is just like good parenting but much less draining because there’s no backtalk or PTA meetings.” ~ Annie Spiegelman

There are several books I have in my home library which help me with my wacky organic gardening way, but this!  It continues to be my favorite and worthy of its own post, if nothing more than for her clever similarities between gardening and parenting.

I read through it often because she makes me smile.  Gardeners and non-gardeners alike, there something in here for all of us.  Here’s what she has to say about the “lazy” gardening way:

Your soil is full of minerals, organic matter, air spaces, water, insects, and microorganisms. These soil organisms help store and then release essential nutrients to your plants. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep the underground living system thriving. These organisms (mites, beetles, millipedes, earthworms, bacteria, and fungi) power Mother Nature’s perfect decay cycle by recycling organic matter (leaves, stems) and turning it into humus (or compost), an end product that your plants can easily digest and is full of nutrients to fuel their growth and development. You may even be voted parent of the year by your plants.  This is so much less taxing work than vying for parent of the year with real live children.  Finally, we can all feel like winners.

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Take care of your soil.
It, in turn, will take care of you.