Friday, May 7, 2010

garden fun

Big changes are happening in our backyard soon... ones that I am pretty excited about :)
When we first moved in, we made a gorgeous little fairy glen in a small section of our yard. I wasnt sure anything would grow, but surprisingly, it did. We added herbs, tomatoes, beans, carrots and flowers. Everything grew at quite an amazing rate!

The area behind this little patch is huge and was supposed to be used for the trampoline and a play area. But the bark chips arent feet friendly, and we now need a MUCH bigger trampoline... and so after some begging ( on my part) and working out( on hubbins part) we are going to turn this whole area into a veggie patch. Its going to be magnificent :)
Today, Jared wanted to water the current mini patch and so I got him to carefully do that. He is a very funny gardener, he sings and talks to every plant and is such a delight to watch.







He was excited to find a new tomato growing, then picked my tiny not-quite-ready capsicum ( will have to have some lessons on when things are ready to be picked) and drowned my gerbera. *sigh*




But he is beginning to show the same love of being in the garden and helping things to grow. Amahli was thrilled to be allowed to help too :) Although she would have rather watered herself...




Anybody know whats easy to grow?? I want sweet potato, potato, beans, snow peas, carrots and corn.. the fairly standard on our dinner table. Nothing is ready to plant yet, I need to landscape the area a bit first to make it walk throughable but hopefully over the next month or two....stay tuned!

And, whilst I am on all things gardeny and flowery, want to know the best way to take photos of them??
Five things I have learnt:
1) lie down and take it on the plant level. look at the difference in these two photos, one from above, one from ground zero.






2) lightly spray them with water. Its amazing how different a photo can be when you add the sparkly element of water.






3) Get in as close as your camera will let you without going fuzzy. The details in petals,buds, bark or stamen is incredibly detailed and capturing that can make for a great photo.




4)Look for the little things... whilst happy snapping my garden, Jared pulled me away to look at this...
Its a tiny spider web that caught a few of his drops. Totally fascinating.





5) Always look for garden rainbows. Jared helped to make this one for me today..





Once we had finished in the garden, we read this book called "Up, down and around" and talked about what things grow up above the ground and what things grow down below the ground.













Such a great book to help us on our new little garden venture.

I have another one coming called "Grow it, Eat it" so hopefully with that I will be off to a great start!!



Are you in the garden today? Link here to show us all!

5 comments:

  1. Great book! I had trouble this morning too, but it just now let me link up.

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  2. Hi Karina Sorry you had trouble linking up. They corrected the problem. We planted flowers for the first time this year and this book would be great to continue our learning.

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  3. yay! it worked! Aw my first McLinky :)
    thanks Girls :)

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  4. That garden is going to be so neat. i can't wait to see pictures of it. You take amazing pictures, by the way. :-)

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  5. Sounds like a great book for toddlers. Thanks for the recommendation!

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