Purling Sprite: Working Hard or Hardly Working?

That's what Grandpa Phelps would say. My boys are putting their heart into our little garden spot. What was once a mound of dirt, it is now becoming the little corner that will provide fresh vegetables for our family during the Summer months. As the economy gets worse and worse and prices just keep going up, we are putting an extra emphasis on our little garden patch.

When we moved into the house, we didn't have a spot for a garden, the entire back yard was landscaped which was nice, except for the fact that hubby grew up having a garden and I have gotten it my head that we need to be a little self-sufficient. Consequently, we started planning a way to get a garden. In one of the backyard corners, we had a huge downhill that was a pain to mow, then new neighbors moved to a house behind ours and they started to dig a hole to extend their basement patio, divine! The dirt they were getting rid off was what we needed, so we moved it over to our downhill corner and thus our garden patch was born.

When we moved the dirt last year, we didn't have a chance to plant a garden as it was a bit late in the year, but this year we have started a little early and whenever the weather permits, hubby goes out there and works on spreading the dirt and getting the dirt ready for planting. We have Grandpa's tiller and we are almost ready to to plant...now if the weather cooperates this Saturday we will be planting peas.

Besides getting a little bit of produce from our garden patch, I have seen that the best part of it all is the relationship that hubby and Wonderboy are building. Wonderboy eagerly waits for dad to come home so that they can work together on the garden. With a little shovel and "normal" side shovel, side by side they work. If bricks need to be moved to build the retaining wall, Wonderboy puts his muscle, heart, and soul into the job and brings daddy a brick. Hubby always talks about the lessons he learned while helping his Dad work on the garden, my dream is that one day my son has the same type of memories about his time with Dad.

The retaining wall that they boys are building is sure cute! We are going to plant the peas and beans around the outer edge so we do not have to bend down to pick them, pretty neat (hubby thought of that). My farmer boy is sure happy working on his garden...now we just need a cow in the backyard and a few chickens and we can definitely be self-sufficient...alright, not really!

More pictures of our garden patch...little Benny is happily dancing around moving her tush for the pictures. I'll have more pictures of the finished project by next week...the wall is almost complete, 40 more bricks and we should be set.