Conservationists

Saturday was D-day for the "lawn." I use that word very loosely since about 90% of our lawn is crab grass, 8% is broad leaf weed, and the remaining 2% is actually grass. We took a sample of our lawn to the Home Depot, where a very helpful garden expert informed us of that fact and that the best way to deal with it would be to roundup the entire thing, till it and then seed it. So that is our plan. While constructing our plan we also had to take into account what was already in the yard. Apparently at one time a gardener lived in our home that really liked to use bulbs. We have crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and blue bells, all of which were clearly located at one point in flower beds, which are now "lawn." Not wanting to spend any more money than we have to, and also not wanting to kill anything that still had a prayer of surviving we decided to transplant any and all flowers possible to two small beds. I did that Friday and Saturday afternoons.

So I weeded, and turned two areas in our backyard and dug up all the bulbs from the lawn on Friday and Saturday with Charlotte. Do you know how hard it is to weed with an 8 month pregnant belly in the way? I have never been so slow in my entire life! Charlotte also contributed to the slowness, but made the days much more enjoyable. She is an excellent and entertaining helper. She loves to see worms and always says, "I want to hold it." Even though if you get one even close to her she runs away. She also likes to give them baths with the watering can. By the way, our backyard is chock full of worms. I have never seen a yard so thoroughly wormy. She also loved to help me jump on the shovel when digging up the bulbs.

I decided to use this experience as an opportunity to teach her about plants and gardens and such so I told her about the different parts of the plants we were digging up. She really liked the new vocabulary, flowers, stems, leaves, bulbs, roots. Unfortunately she couldn't really remember the word for bulbs, so she decided to substitute the closest word in her current vocabulary. It's pretty funny to hear a little two year old say, "I want to hold the boobies! Let me have them."

I am so proud of our two little gardens right now I can't even believe it. I've taken photos of them just so I can remember them. In the first one we made I put daffodils, tulips, onion (I think), crocuses, and blue bells. After that one was full we still had more crocuses that we had dug up to save so we put those in the second garden along with the trumpet vines and pink ladies that were already there. Hopefully the boobies will all survive the move!