Working in the garden

I am instilling work ethics in my boys again these holidays.  They must earn their Nintendo time.  Whether it be folding the washing, vacuuming, cleaning out the garage, cleaning the car or today . . . gardening.  I find many hands make my work much lighter.  Although it can be a bit of a struggle at times to get them all working together, we still manage to accomplish a few things.

I pull out the weeds and trim branches off the trees and shrubs, Sam cuts them up, Toby and Ethan put them in the recycling bin, Toby stamps down the cuttings so we can fit more in, Ethan keeps working, Sam goes off and plays with Amelia and Toby asks me lots of questions.

We end up having lots of little breaks in the shade under the Ash tree, lunch of pretzels on the front porch, or a climb in the tree.  It is such perfect weather for gardening.  It's a lush 20°C day with a slight, cool breeze, my favourite kind of day that makes me feel good to be alive and be outside.

My aim today was to clear out the one part of our garden that isn't filled with shrubs or trees and try, yet again, to turn it into a veggie/herb patch.  It's a good spot that gets the full morning sun in our front yard.

This week is our footpath garbage collection that comes around every 6 months and I found these wooden boards, possibly from a neighbours sand pit, so I picked them up to use them as upraised veggie beds.  There are two short lengths and two long lengths, so all I need to do is get some more wood to put on the ends so I end up with two rectangular veggie beds.

We have finished for today, but hopefully we will continue and I will keep updates on the progress of the garden beds.  I've been wanting to do this project for a long time, but I guess opportunities arise when the time is right and I guess that time is now.  I'll use the boys muscles to help dig, plant etc before they go back to school at the end of the month.  Until then we'll hopefully have more cool days so we can get outside and climb trees and lay in the shade.