Gettin' our Garden on...in January?!

Yep, ya heard me...our little family staked our claim to some volcanic-red good ol' Hawaiian dirt by the side of our house on New Year's Day last week. Not only did it feel weird to be outside on New Year's Day in flip-flops, but it was even weirder to be wielding a hoe, digging in the dirt.

We'd had a small garden before at our first house back home when Bubby was a baby and I made his baby food. Now that he's a genuine, bonafide wildman of a three-year-old (and we've moved across the continent & the ocean!) it's time to get serious about da veggies again. I used to think he was sooo, well, gifted since he ate EVERYTHING that I fed him. Including spinach, cauliflower & zucchini?! What baby eats zucchini? Mine did. As in past tense. Which brings us back to planting our garden in January. Enter my new favorite cookbook: Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld.


Yep, Seinfeld's wifey. She's apparantly more than his wife, she's a cooking-for-children genius. There's some debate over the origins of her ideas, but hey bottom line the cookbook rocks! The reason I love this book is that it takes fresh fruits & veggies, and sneaks them into kid-friendly recipes for the whole family to enjoy. Mom gets her satisfaction of having pulled one over their eyes, and the poor, unsuspecting kiddos are getting their veggies for the day ~ win, win, right? :)

Basically, we planted this garden in the hopes that it would yield some fresh veggies for our family to munch on, and for me to puree into some fabulous-ly yummy recipes for Noah to enjoy. Now of course when he gets a little older, we'll be the mean parents and do the "you must take x amount of bites before you leave the table!" My mom thinks I am such a mean mom for doing that ;) But for now, while he's in that all-important "I am independent, hear my toddler voice roar" phase, we'll settle for what we can get. So we hauled it down to the Home Depot to pick out some favorites. My mouth is watering over the thought of fresh tomatoes & spinach in just a matter of a few more weeks. As in before everyone at home is even planting theirs. Sorry, that was mean :) Just kidding ;)


We've got lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, (insert Jenn-ay joke here. No really, go ahead. I've been dealing with that since the 7th grade. ;), watermelon, canteloupe, pumpkin, onions, and tuh-ma-toes. YUMMMM! I cannot wait to make a salad from my own garden, with fresh (& free!) healthy ingredients!

Here's Noah "helping" Daddy ~ how does he sit like that?!


Here's me doing my teacher-writing thang on some name plates so we can remember what we planted & where. Please don't judge my bad hair day or lack of makeup, it was a lazy holiday ;)


And here he is helping put name plate-thingys in the ground. Such concentration ;)


Yes I know our fence color is um, blah. That's the Army for you ~ they ran out of green & threw the rest of what they had on our house ;) But I'm working on making the inside cute! And yes that's a blob of spray paint on the grass, I'm always making over something out there with spray paint ;) The poor grass has been silver, red, blue, etc. What can I say, we're redneck imports to these here parts...anyways, here's a shot of our little plot-o-dirt "after all Katy-Scarlett, land's the only thing that lasts!" (Name that movie!) This is our family project, week one. Check it out, if you look closely you can see peas, carrots, lettuce & a few other teeny-tiny blooms. YAHOO! Yum...my hope for this project is that we'll all have some fun in the dirt first of all, and second to (fingers crossed) inspire Noah to want to reap what he has "sown." Hey, a momma can hope, right? :)


Check back soon, I promise to have some garden updates ~ it's even one of Noah's "chores" now to water the "punkin' patch" as he so affectionately calls it ~ but I love that it seems to be his favorite chore ;)

xo,
Jen