Gardens are Growing!

We have all sorts of good vegetables and fruits growing now. Just about everything is planted, kids gardens, upper gardens, lower garden and container gardens. It seems we have a good start, I hope a lot of great food will be the result.

Doesn't this look funny? I need to get more fencing. This silliness is to keep out the wildlife, and our own bunny who was eating things in the gardens.

Garden is about 3/4's planted

All the garden plots are planted now except for Hayley's. I made two new raised beds and those are planted too. It was a lot of work but hopefully will be worth it. The only things which need to be planted now are the larger items that need a lot of space, squashes, pumpkins and such, that go in a bigger garden in a different spot. I also need to plant some more greens somewhere.

 Another project I've been working on is thinning the forsythia around the bench area, it's pretty but it has really taken over. We have forsythia in several different places so I didn't feel too bad about eliminating some in this area. Now the lilacs have more room and the bench can be used again. It was almost completely overgrown.

All sorts of wildlife around at lunch time

I had my lunch outdoors and while I had lunch I enjoyed watching hummingbirds, chipmunks, toads, butterflies and our bunny.

 

 

 

 Later in the day I saw cloven hoof prints in another recently planted area. I like getting a glimpse of the wildlife we share our property with.

Making Crepes with Tristan

Tristan is working on the cooking merit badge for Boy Scouts. Today he needed to watch a video about fighting bacteria when cooking and then he needed to make some crepes for the family. Excepting for me finding some ingredients for him Tristan made the crepes all by himself. He did a good job.

 

working outdoors

Lilacs in bloom, spring is here. They smell really nice! The bush is doing much better this year now that it's fully freed from some bittersweet that was attacking it. It was a lot of work to get rid of the bittersweet near this bush and along the dog fence. many, many, many weeks of effort. Well worth it though. Living in the woods does present challenger.

 There's an area at the edge of the yard and the start of the woods that has a weird, rooty tree growing. I've done a lot of clearing in that area and maybe want to cut the tree down (for more sun) but maybe not. I've tried plating some marigolds in amongst the roots too see if that adds interest to the area.

Rooty tree right by the first stone wall

I've planted some marigolds amongst the roots.

Hayley's graduation

Hayley has always wanted a big graduation and decided to graduate with the homeschool co-op. Big it was, 29 graduates! It was a nice ceremony and we're all proud of Hayley.

last day of co-op for this year

Last day, now on to summer break! It's been a long and busy year. As I reflect on my year teaching middle school science I think it went well. I often wished we had more time and we didn't always get to all the experiments each week but we got to a good many of them. I know some parents don't like teaching science and doing messy labs. It doesn't bother me, I'm glad the kids got to do a lot of experiments this year and have a lot of fun. I'll miss the class and the kids, I won't miss the collecting of lab materials, enough for a dozen kids, each week. It was more expensive than I expected and some weeks more difficult to find just what I needed. I think the students have come a long way. In the first few classes many did not know how to write a lab report, or how to work well in groups. In some of our early classes many were unwilling to stand in front of the class or answer questions. By the end of the year everyone was participating well, all the kids were able to read a report aloud to their classmates and take questions from them. Early one there was one "problem child" I didn't think he's be able to stay in class but working together with his mother he turned his behavior around and was eventually a very well behaved student in class. Next year I've chosen to teach a class that won't require me to purchase so many materials on a weekly basis, I think it'll be a lot easier.

Last day in science class we had special visitors, one student and his family brought in a bunch of native reptiles and amphibians to show the class. yes our class was chemistry and physics but some zoology is never a bad thing :-).

Next up was geography class, which I co-taught. We had a geography fair for the final class. The 10 students ach did a project on a different country and also brought in a representative food for everyone to sample. Trevor did his project on Russia, Colin chose India.