I've been working on the garden, all the live long day!

Happy Earth Month! This is the month every year when I work the most and play the most (in the garden, that is). I love all the fun things happening all over town. Too bad I never have time to go to any! 

This past week I got a little bit of time to do some of what I love--- Garden!  All thanks to wonderful Heather who came over to give me a whole afternoon to myself. 

Good deed #1: She met us after yoga class ended (last class of this session!) and gave my girls lunch along with her kids while I cleaned up the classroom.  

Good deed #2: Then I took her little girl and C. home while she dropped J. off at preschool for me.  

Good deed #3: Then she supervised a playdate between her two kids and C. so that I could garden, unimpeded.  

Good deed #4: Then she put C. down for a nap for me, which was a total success bc that has been a real pain since we took her paci away.  

Good deed #5: The she picked J. up from preschool and let the kids play at the playground so that I could finish up gardening for the day.  

Awesome. I didn't ask for any of this. She offered so sincerely that I took her up on it and just felt the love and allowed her to give me this gift. Thank you Heather. You are the best!

Jeremiah also gave me some time to garden this past weekend.  Sometimes the kids let me garden and help me too.  Thank you guys!  I'm almost done creating my new garden beds!  There's so much yard work for us to do bc we have to fight two different kinds of bamboo and crab grass on top of things. But we're getting there. 

Another note about gardening- sometimes we try doing things well with supplies specifically meant for that purpose. Like when we built raised garden beds out of store bought wood and filled it with soil brought to our house by a dump truck.  Nice.

And this year, I bought trellis poles and plant training twine to build a trellis for my beans.  But I also made another trellis for my other beans out of super used wooden lattice and decaying bamboo poles.  Because I had them lying around and I try not to buy new things when I could make do with old things. But this trellis took me 4 X longer already bc it blew over and I had to replace the poles and add some sticks.  Total makeshift thing.  But free for now.

Best Moment of the Week: Covered this one, I think! I really liked planting sunflowers with my girls too.

Worst Moment of the Week: Dealing with C.'s resistance to falling asleep now that we've taken her paci.  I know she'll get over it but right now it's very exhausting for us all.

Thoughts of the Day:

Back to how this is Earth Month and I am busy.  First off, I found out this week that I got one of the grants for J.'s preschool garden! Still haven't heard about the third one but this is already 2 out of 3 so that's not bad! So I had to go to a grant workshop for that and now I'm busy with all the scheduling and purchasing and whatnot.  

But mostly I'm busy bc I am the coordinator of an environmental festival for 500 Baltimore City school kids.  This was my dream 5 years ago and I made it happen so that I could have enough work to do from home once I had kids.  The first festival was when Jillian was one year old and this is the fourth year of the festival (as she's four).  This is my first year without a newborn or being pregnant.  That's a major improvement in my energy level!  It's a major undertaking and the festival lasts 4 days this year. I intend to be out of commission for that whole week, and then the whole next week I'm gardening with J.'s preschool every day.  So after this week, you can expect to see me again in mid-May.