What's for Lunch???

School pick up is a great time.  The kids are excited from the day, excited to be headed home and full of stories.  I always hated my lunches when I was in elementary school.  PB&Js and  nasty red delicious apples galore.  By lunch time the bread was soggy, well you get my drift.  So instead of subjecting my kids to that, they get "hot lunch" at school (reminds me of a great song from Fame: 'if it's yellow then it's jello, if it's blue it could be stew ewwwww')! I digress...

So I ask them every day: "What was for hot lunch today?"  Today's response (like 3/5 days) was I don't remember, from both of them!!  Then they remember orange juice or a fruit cup, but not the main course.  It was 4 hours ago!  They weren't joking either.  That memorable hugh?

So how am I going to tie this into my garden theme, hmmm... well maybe the kids won't remember exactly what they had for dinner every night, but they'll know where it came from, how it was raised, and how to be healthy.  

We planted an entire row densely with 7 different varieties of lettuces today during our lunch break.  We should have plenty for our consumption along with the Hemmig's (our garden com padres) and other friends as well as left over.  Anyone know a local restaurant looking for a salad greens supplier?   Thankfully, both of the kids like salad, or the first harvests of the season would be very disappointing.  The rhubarb has also made an appearance.  Now, before last year I hadn't had rhubarb since I was a kid, on a Sunday morning at Gram's house.  It was wonderful last year in oatmeal!  I so look forward to this early garden treat.  Looking forward to learning more and teaching our kids more this year about what is possible.

Ready for Spring

We got back on Saturday night from Spring Break in California.  There, Spring (as my dad says) "is coming to an end and we're ready for warm weather."  It never ceases to amaze me how it looks when we get off the plane there in the Spring  after/during a long winter at home.  My cones are on immediate overload as the vastness of the green seems to glow.  It is absolutely beautiful.  So as I got on the plane to head back I was wondering how much change toward spring we'd had at home.

Though it was a cold winter and it seemed to start early, we had pockets of nice days and Brian and I got a lot of prep work done in the yard very early this year.  The day before we left for CA we quickly popped peas and radishes in the ground, not wanting to miss our window while we were gone.  We were excited to get home and see if anything had started.  We got off the plane and everything still seemed very grey.  Rather disappointing.  But once we started to look, you could see all kinds of signs of life.  Daffodils and crocus' blooming, the leaves just about to spread open on many of the trees, the grass is even getting incredibly green (reminiscent of what we just saw in the west).  Our own beautiful spring is just beginning!

We managed to live from May through about October last year on all of our own produce (except fruit and onions).  So we expanded our varieties of items for this years garden even more and included lots of new things.  Sunday morning, we put 90 onion seeds in containers in the basement as well as 3 different varieties of tomatoes.  Brian has rigged up a self-watering system for the starts this year, so it should be relatively painless.  We're about a month away from the majority of the planting outside, but we're raring to go.  No peas yet, but we do have baby radish sprouts.  Our next project is to get the lettuce's set up, but this year that requires building a raised bed.  We're using some large old floor boards from the barn (reuse). :)

It's all a matter of perspective (and location)  Spring is just beginning here and I love to watch every step of it.

Balance

Balance is so difficult.  How do we do it?  Better yet, how do we teach our kids so they're prepared for what life will throw at them?  We began a year ago trying to simplify our lives.  We started a lifestyle change, partially inspired by having two mortgages, but one that we hope will teach our kids to find balance, and learn a little bit about the earth in the process.  I enjoy being busy, thrive on it.  But I want to capture for my kids a combination of the care-freeness Brian and I had as kids combined with learning how to rely better on ourselves.  It has been and will be a great deal of work, but it's a journey that we're committed to.  This is another area where we must learn balance.  I'm impatient, I get an idea, research it, and implement the necessary steps for completion.  I must find balance in that, the journey.  As Brian says is a marathon, not a sprint.  I began the thought of this blog as a way to chronicle our gardening adventures this year, maybe it will evolve into something else.