Container Gardening

I love growing a garden. This year it hurt to not plant my garden. In the end I gave in to the temptation and I did end up planting some lettuce. I simply could not imagine going through the whole summer with no homegrown vegetables. Poor soil condition is still a huge factor so I'm not sure what to expect. Or maybe I am but I'm in self denial because I'm full of that hope that a gardener plants along with each seed.

The spring planting is a fun time for the children too. In the past the Artist has had a section of the garden to manage by herself. This year would have been the first time the Engineer had the same.
For a while I thought I'd be giving up that pleasurable learning experience for the kids. But as either luck or absent-mindedness would have it, they each planted a container garden.

In past years I've had two window boxes of marigolds outside my back door. This year I expected the same, but somehow I have managed not to save any of the seeds from last year. And all my trips to the nursery were done. And I wanted to get the dirty outdoor work all done yesterday while the weather was nice.

I looked through all my little seed packets and found I had only one kind of flower, a few left over vegetables and lots of herbs. I let the kids look through all the seeds and choose what they wanted to grow in their window box.

The Artist must have enjoyed the kohlrabi she grew last year, because she chose it again. And the Engineer surprised me by selecting lettuce. We will have unusual back porch flower boxes, but I think the kids will enjoy them more than ever. The eagerness they showed in the planting, and the way they compared notes about whose seeds should germinate first and how tall the plants should grow was satisfying for a mom to see.