Greening Sam and Avery

next year's pumpkins have been planted

We cleaned out a huge section of our back-back yard today. Then we dug six holes and buried all the seeds, guts and chunks of pumpkin waste that we had from our pumpkin carving party. The chunks and guts aren't really important, just a good way to compost those as well. I am hoping that if I can keep the weeds tamed back there that we could have a really good pumpkin patch.

The girls were very curious about what was going on and grabbed little rakes and shovels to help us dig the holes, plant the seeds and clear out some brush.

Today, unlike most days, I did not tell them they had to help. I didn't encourage them to come over and join me. I let them play and do their own thing while I got started. They gradually became interested in what I was doing and both found their way over to me wanting to help out. I love that!

We have a lot more yard work days coming up with dead-heading plants, raking leaves and cleaning up to get ready for winter. Though the girl's "help" may sometime slow us down it is so much more fun when these days can be spent as a family.

Do you include your kids in yard work?

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The Nitty Gritty!

Not much else to add about yard work. I enjoy it most days but the work to clear out our pumpkin patch was killer on my back and my bed is calling my name!

I do want to let you all know that I am going to be out for a few days this week. I am headed to the WI Association for Environmental Education Fall Conference! I am SO excited for this conference, especially a workshop on early childhood environmental education. Can't wait to share with you all the new stuff that I learn.

I will still get the outdoor play link up on Friday (super excited about my idea to share!) but probably not much else, until I get back on Sunday.

Hoping to at least get a book post up before I head out of town though!

just because they are green does not mean they aren't tasty

That was a long title!

The temps will be dropping here very soon and I wanted to do something with all the green tomatoes that I still had on the plants. Thanks to my sister-in-law I knew just what to do with all these green tomatoes!

This was the small pile!

So, I followed a great recipe and turned them into some really good green tomato salsa!

We made 11 jars of salsa and have already given two of them away to friends as thank you gifts!

Sam was very confused at first as to why we were picking the tomatoes that are green, when I have been telling her all summer to only pick the red ones! But once we started picking she loved finding the green ones. They are harder for her to spot than the red ones so she really loved the "hunt"!

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The Nitty Gritty!

I am exhausted and have had a long day otherwise I would share the recipe that we used. If you are really interested leave me a comment and I will send you the recipe sometime soon!

Good night!

 

fall in the garden

Did you see the great post by Go Explore Nature about getting your kiddos in the garden in the Fall? If not you need to head over there and check it out.

Sam and I headed to the garden today to finish pulling the carrots.

We had a lot to dig up but with us both using our shovels and just digging away it took no time at all! She loved digging and loosening up the soil around the carrots and then wiggling them until they were loose enough to pull out. While we were digging we found moths, worms, ants and spiders, lots of great little critters! Even though it was really chilly Sam and I had fun digging in the dirt.

Great Fall activity!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Okay, this didn't actually happen today! I am at a college friend's wedding today and did this with Sam yesterday. But I really wanted to share the link to the post that I mentioned and show off our amazing end of the season carrots.

Go dig in the dirt as many times as you can before the ground freezes! You just never know what your kiddos may find in the Fall!

crafting and food

Starting to talk and learn about Fall around here! Super excited for crunching leaves, Fall colors, carving pumpkins and cooler hikes.

While Avery was still napping Sam and I got messy with paint and creative! The craft went super quick making one tree so if we did it again I would have more pieces of paper ready so she could make even more trees.

This first one is Sam's.

 

And here is mine.
 
We made falling leaves with our hands and finger prints.

Here is where I got the idea.

We also spent time in the kitchen today. Had to do something with this guy!

 
Zucchini dinner rolls are the first thing that got made today. Four loaves of zucchini bread were made with the last massive one that we found plus lots of grilled zucchini. I need to find another great recipe that can freeze easily. Any suggestions?

We also prepared a lot of tomatoes today! I say we but that is a Chris job. He has taken on almost all of the preparing and freezing of produce this season. And today he tackled a massive amount of tomatoes.

 
We cooked dinner for some friends two nights ago and Sam really enjoyed pointing out the things in the meal that we had grown ourselves.

So, it was a busy day. Happy Friday to all of you!

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The Nitty Gritty!

If I were to do the tree painting again I would skip painting the branches as that made it harder to really see our hands. And if you have a kiddo that is willing to do a little bit of painting at a time you could do each color seperately, let it dry, and then come back with another color. This might help make the hands and colors stand out better (or just better paint might help that too!).

 

bug week - green mama blog hop

So since it is bug week and our garden is full of both the helpful and not-so-helpful types of bugs I thought I would share a resource for how to deal with the not-so-helpful garden bugs, the GREEN way!

This is a great site if you like homemade products and aren't afraid of trying things out to see what works best for you. There are lots of homemade recipes for pest control methods that are safe for the family and the environment. This is also just a really cool site, so go check it out here!

Luckily the pests have not been that bad for us yet this year so I have not had to use anything! Woohoo. But I am sure they will find the garden soon enough.

 

Welcome to the Green Mama Blog Hop!

Please only join this hop if you deem your blog as 'green'. It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or if you're a pro.. this Green Mama Blog Hop is for you!

My goal is to have more and more people join each week! But that can't happen without your help. If you could please post the button on your blog, as well as in a post, that would be great! Thanks so much for your involvement! I want us 'Green Mamas' to befriend each other and be there for questions or support.

<a href="http://www.giveawaysandlife.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i457.photobucket.com/albums/qq300/sashica13/green-house-2-1.jpg" /></a>

~Lovely Hostesses~

And Then There Were 4...

Greening Sam and Avery

The Little Hedgehog

~Featured Blog~

Untrained Hair Mom

Each week, there will be a fourth, Featured Blog to be followed as well. To qualify to be the Featured Blog, you will need to participate in all of the guidelines. I will pick one at random from all qualifiers. I will email you the Monday before the Hop, if you are chosen.

Hopping Guidelines:

MANDATORY:

* Add your blog's home page to the Linky list! I will be monitoring the blogs to make sure we only have 'green', family-friendly blogs involved.  

* Follow the 3 hosts, Featured Blog and the blog ahead of yours. Make sure to leave comments on each of the blog so they can follow you back! The more you follow, the more will follow you back!

OPTIONAL:

(You don't have to do these to enter the hop, but you must do both to qualify for the Featured Blog position)

* Grab the new Green Mama Blog Hop button and place it on your home page.

* Put the button into a post on your blog. Then leave a comment on this Hop post with the link.

This hop will open each Tuesday night and will be open all week. It will start over each week, so keep coming back each week to enter!

Welcome to the Green Mama Blog Hop! Enjoy!

I've been replaced

I was doing a ton of weeding today while the girls were playing in the backyard. I looked up to check on their swinging/climbing play to see them sitting together in the middle of the yard.

I set down my weeds and walked over. They both had hands full of little white clover flowers. I asked Sam what they were working on and she told me that she was teaching Avery how to pick flowers. She informed me that she taught Avery what a flower was and how to say "flower".

Sure enough I asked Avery to say flower and "ower" came out! Sam was so proud of herself.

And I was pretty proud of my tiny little teacher too!

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The Nitty Gritty!

Our harvest from today...

She could not have been more excited about the carrot!

I am trying to let the carrot grow as long as possible but everyday she asks if she can have one. It is getting tougher and tougher to keep her from just jumping into the garden and picking them!  So cute (but also really annoying!).

our first harvest

Outside of basil and cilantro, today was our first garden harvest!

 
The happy gardener would have been content to eat the whole pile right away!

 
It was great how she wanted to get right into the plants with me, lifting up leaves and asking each time "is this one big enough?". She was so gentle with the plants and eager to learn how to pick the beans. I saw a responsible, calm and good listening side of my daughter that NEVER exists. It was AWESOME.

I immediately asked Chris if we could start raising chickens! How that thought occurred to me I have no idea. But how excited Sam was about the beans and how proud I felt that I was growing the food my girls would eat, I absolutely want more of that feeling! I had no idea how empowered I would feel growing my own food. Of course he instantly said a very firm no! We will see!!! 

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The Nitty Gritty!

First let me expand a bit more about this gardening thing. We definitely did not do it right this year. Our tomato plants are basically growing on top of each other. The carrotts are too close together and the bean rows are ridiculously too close to each other. Basically, I tried to crame too much into our space. Which means that actually harvesting the food is a nightmare! I had to lift Sam over the chicken wire fence we have had to put around it (silly rabbits!) and place her feet between two rows of beans but lifting up the leaves to find the ground beneath them. Then I told her she couldn't move at all, just lift up the leaves by her feet and look for beans she thought were big. She got to harvest some and had a great time but it was not kid friendly harvesting at all. Very bummed about this. We will have to reconfigure things for next year to make it easier for the girls to really be involved.

But even with all my mistakes and all the plants that are in our small little garden we are REALLY growing food! I thought it would be fun, maybe help to stock our freezer a bit, but I had no idea that it would make me feel this way. Empowering is really the best way I can describe it. And now I want to do so much more!

Second, I added a ton of books to the Must See Children's Book page. So if you haven't taken a look at the list lately be sure to check it out.

fruits of our labor

Well, almost.

WE MISSED STRAWBERRY PICKING SEASON!  A very short picking season combined with our crazy month of June means that we did not get to go and pick our own strawberries this year. We called the local farm that we like and they said they could put together an order for us TODAY but we had to come and pick it up this morning. We also didn't get to order nearly as much as we wanted.

 
But don't they look great? And they are SO sweet this year. Our jam amount will be seriously decreased because I can't keep my kids (read husband!) from eating them right out of the box.

Our labor IS finally starting to pay off in the garden. Sam, Avery and I spent some time last night when we got home and today examining our garden very closely. What fun it is to play I-Spy in the garden and have them trying to find all the flowers, bugs and veggies that are just starting to grow!  I am also teaching Sam how to gently lift up leaves and move branches so that they can find the hidden beans and tomatos. Look at what all we have found so far!

 
 
 
 
We are all so excited for when we can make a pizza covered in tomatos, pepper and basil from our own garden! I am also thinking that I need to get each girl a little basket with a handle on it for when they can start harvesting beans and tomatos.

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The Nitty Gritty!

How is your garden doing? If you have a recent garden post or garden photos I would love to check it out! Leave the link in the comments and I will hop around to them all sometime this weekend!!! 

And if you have any gardening with kids book suggestions I am interested in those too. I have read "Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots" but would love to get my hands on something that is actually designed for young kids to read. Suggest away!

Day 357: lessons in the garden

Our garden is bursting right now (perfect timing since we are headed out of town for the big family float trip in just a few days!). But I am finding that the best thing about having the garden these days is the teachable moments that are popping up everywhere!

1. Weeds! Sam and Avery have been helping me weed. Yes, we have lost a few carrot plants as I cannot quite teach Avery what not to pull yet. But Sam is really quite handy with helping to weed. If I keep her in an easy area, like around the pepper plants or tomato plants, she can easily see what plants not to touch (because they are huge and surrounded by a cage!) and which ones to pull. But the best part about weeding with Sam was trying to tell her what a weed is exactly. Why is grass a weed when it is in the veggie garden but not a weed in the middle of the lawn? It was pretty fun and interesting trying to explain the idea that some plants we want in one place but don't want in another place. And that a "weed" is any plant growing somewhere that we don't want it.

2. Bugs! Pretty self-explanatory but we have been having so much fun with all the bugs and worms that are popping up in the garden. Love watching how excited the girls get when they find something. You can just never have too many good quality bug spottings.

3. Roots! We transplanted a few plants recently and Sam loved loosening up the roots and playing with them before we put the plants back in the ground. It led to great conversations about what the roots do for the plants. Today we found a great book at the library to build on her interest in the roots.

What Do Roots Do? by Kathleen V. Kudlinski. This is an incredible informative book aimed at the early learner. The information is basic and the text very descriptive which makes it very easy for even a three year old to understand the functions of plant roots. And it rhymes!

What lessons are your kids learning in the garden this season? How do you connect other things like books, art and learning to the choirs and maintenance of the garden?

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The Nitty Gritty!

What is it with books that rhyme? I am obsessed and my kids just love them! I have the best luck in getting both girls to sit still and listen to a much longer book when it ryhmes. I am not a reading expert so I don't get it but I know it works!

So, one more great rhyming book that is a fun learning tool with the garden is What Kinds of Seeds Are These? by Heidi Bee Roemer. This is a very cute and informative look at seeds. The rhyming parts describe the seeds and where they can be found and then the next page will have the answer as to what plant that particular seed comes from. Sam doesn't know all the plants they were describing so I think the book was a little over her head but she still sat interested and listening the whole time!

One last thing and then this tired mamma is off to bed...is anyone else SO SICK OF THE RAIN? Where are my sunny, pool appropriate, great for shady hikes, kind of summer days? We have been in the low 60s and raining for far too long now and I am getting very frustrated!!!!  Just had to get that off my chest.

Also, (okay I lied, this makes two more things!) I am tired of not having a camera and am REALLY hoping to get it fixed asap.

Good night!

 

Day 337: family trip to the garden

Missouri Botanical Garden is an AMAZING spot in St. Louis, MO if you ever get the chance to visit. It is a favorite spot to visit almost everytime we come to town.

Today we headed there with all the kids and even in the heat it was a great time.

 
They have an extreme treehouse exhibit on display there and the kids could not wait to check them all out. Each one so different and so inviting for kids.

 
 
 
The bee hives were a point of interest. It was neat talking with my oldest niece about why these bees were not in round hives like you see in books.

 
But feeding the fish was the big hit of the garden.

 
 

The kids also got to play in the fountains and climb all over the children's garden play structures that they have.

It was a great day full of learning, exploring and family fun!

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The Nitty Gritty!

More family fun planned for the next few days. Do you get to plan fun outings and have adventures with your family?