The prophet said to plant a garden...

...so that's what we'll do!

You guys remember that song? They never sing it in Primary anymore.

Paul has wanted to make a garden in our backyard for a long time. This time around, when he brought it up again, I was all for it. We came up with the idea to use the space by the trampoline to put one in.

Two Saturdays ago, Paul had the kids while I was at Univ. of Scouting for the day. He took them to Lowes to buy supplies and they got started. In the afternoon when I got home they were just about to finish the walls.

The kids helping level out the ground, remove the rock and clear the space for the box. They worked really hard the entire day. They were great.

Paul and the kids sawing the boards - and below the box is almost made.

Paul borrowed his dad's pickup to get some good dirt by the truckload. We had it unloaded pretty fast, with the help of the kids of course. Unfortunately, 1 truckload wasn't quite enough so we finished the project on Monday night for FHE. Paul had picked up another truckload of dirt, we unloaded it, and it was dark when we finally got to the planting part.

Shoveling the dirt - I think this was by far the favorite part for the kids. Megan and Kaitlyn were in charge of leveling and packing it down after Paul dumped it in.

So, now, a week and 1 day later, we've got a ton of little tiny baby lettuce plants growing (Megan didn't get the memo that you only put in 1 or 2 seeds every foot apart... she just dumped the entire bag :) ) and our tomato plants, strawberry and green & yellow peppers are doing great. They never had the transplant trauma we've seen happen before when we plant things.

Hopefully in a few months we’ll be drowning in tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, strawberries etc. It was cute, Paul had each of the kids pick what they wanted to plant. Jack wanted watermelon so bad (as he likes to say a lot), and wouldn't stop talking about it even AFTER he got in bed. Kaitlyn wanted carrots, Megan bell peppers and squash, Paul wanted the tomatoes (remember his attempt last year with the tomato plant? :( Sadly it ended with only 1 or 2 fruits of less than desirable quality) And I picked the strawberries, cilantro, basil & parsley. It's been fun.

Ever since moving to this house I've really enjoyed spending time outside watching (and hoping) things grow. Except when it's summer. Then I hate it.

Our grapefruit trees are blossoming like crazy… I LOVE that smell.

Our bougainvillea’s are doing AWESOME this year (they usually don't start to grow back until May, and are usually so damaged from frost that we have to chop them down to the base)...

and our vines other plants are flowering too. Ya' gotta love spring!