Our Gardening Adventure

Okay, for all who asked, here is a picture of Eric's truck.  It is a great little truck and very handy already for our attempt to build a little garden this morning....Last night we went to Home Depot for our "date night" (exciting I know) and picked up a bunch of supplies to build a garden.First off, Jacob threw some rocks at Dad, so here he is starting our "fun" family activity with a time-out... (isn't is frustrating when you try so hard to have good family activities and they never turn out they way you picture them in your head...argh!)
So on to better things.  Eric dug some rocks out of the corner of our yard and built up a little area for our garden (for those of you who haven't been here, pretty much everything is rocks--3/4 of our yard at least is these rocks).
The boys "helped" Eric mix in some garden soil into the sand under the rocks.  I'm sure Eric appreciated the assistance.
And I had to get a shot of this.  For those who know Jacob, you know how stubborn he is.  Well, this morning there are 2 things he wouldn't let us do (and we decided it wasn't worth the fight at the moment--you know, we are keeping our family activity "fun").  Bet you can't guess what those 2 things are.......
SPOILER ALERT!  The two things are clean his face and brush his hair.  He has a kind of 1980's Flock of Seagulls look going on.  Very stylish.  And I guess he was just saving some of his breakfast to eat later.  And then we filled the box with garden soil and let the boys pack it down a bit.  Tyler asked what the stinky smell was and we told his it was cow poop.  He jumped out of the dirt and said he wasn't helping any more because he didn't want to get poop on his shoes.  We had to take back our cow poop comment and told him we were kidding, but that it really was manure. 

Tyler: "What's manure?"  

Me:  "Manure is something in dirt that gives plants the vitamins it needs to grow."  

Tyler:  "Oh okay, as long as it's not cow poop.  That's gross."  

Right....so here he is after he decided to help again, knowing that it was merely manure and not poop...
And Maggie pitched in too.  Actually it was Jake who thought she wanted to help so he made sure she got one of the seedlings to plant.  It was pretty sweet of him, even if it did get dirt all over her cute bouncer seat.  Look at that big bald head!
And here I am with the boys planting the rest of the seeds (we started with a few seedlings but mostly seeds).  Time will tell if my Black Thumb Curse is still active.  I manage to kill every plant I come in contact with, maybe my luck will change.  I think Jacob will manage to kill the plants too...not because of a curse but because he has already wrapped a slinky around one plant and stepped right on top of another.  I might have to put a fence up around the garden not to keep out deer but to keep out Jacob.
Planting some radishes....
And our final product!  Tyler was very proud, but, once again, Jacob was upset.  He was mad at me and refused to smile because he wanted to stand on the plants (again) for his picture.  Ummm, if this is only the first day of keeping him out of the garden maybe I bit off more than I can chew....  We may have a rough season ahead!
But we had fun and managed to get it all done in a couple hours.  In the garden bed we planted peas, broccoli, chives, radishes, red and yellow peppers, cantaloupe and strawberries.  We also planted a watermelon plant in a large pot, some herbs in another pot and tomatoes in an upside-down planter.  The growing season is long here so hopefully we will reap at least a few fresh fruits and veggies from our little garden.  Wish us luck!