Mary, Mary, quite contrary how does your garden grow?

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We're GARDENING!!!!  But first...a horrifying nursery rhyme....

"Mary Mary quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row."

Well let me say that silver bells and cockle shells sound nice but like every other nursery rhyme...the truth is far from it.  Did you know that Mary was actually "Bloody Mary" or "Queen Mary, daughter of Henry the 8th" if you wanted to keep a spot to place your hat.  Apparently, Mary was quite a Catholic believer and didn't approve at all of the Protestant faith so she lopped off heads.  The garden from the nursery rhyme refers to the graveyards that ...grew.  And!  If envisioning tombstones wasn't enough silver bells refered to the thumbscrews and the cockle shells referered to torture instruments that were attached to the genitals.  Seriously....it's up to you to decide if it's a compliment for someone to say you've warmed their cockles...and I know one husband that had better never say it.

And, now that we've had a brief history lesson we've come full circle back to gardening!!!!

I LOVE to garden.  When my hands are deep into the soil I feel grounded.  And, not in that 'Man! Mom and Dad grounded me to my room!' way but I feel complete and at one with the Universe.  It's theraputic and sends calm through out my body unless I weed into an ant community and then I simply FREAK out 'cause I'm terrified of ants.  Yes.  Ants scare the CRAP out of me.  I will happily grab any toxin banned and known to cause grown men to start ovulating if it meant I'd never have to interact with an ant again.  And, that's saying alot 'cause I'm antitoxin....except for about two weeks ago when I learned that cooking meat in an oven means it has to be cleaned up right away or it refuses to budge unless prompted with toxic oven cleaner.

ANYways!  So, I'm chatting with Leann (who has an AMAZING post right now about celery btw!) and she says, "You garden right?"

"...um...Yeah."  (My garden two summers ago was about 100 by 60 and we took it down based on a realtors opinion that large gardens were not good sellers.  I literally cried as we took down all those raised beds and raked all that fertile organic soil throughout the yard.)

"You need to go over to The Homeschool Village and join in on their Garden Challenge!  It's this whole thing where you share your gardening process and what you learn with the kids and etc....( I'm paraphrasing of course cause I was trying to find the site, kiss Sunshine's noggin that had just had a camera dropped on it by her older siblings who were acting like twits because their twit mother was trying to find some garden love.)

So!  I'm joining along and you should too.  There are only a few rules....you have to share pics and well here...
"To participate:
1.Join us and link up once per month March 31st, April 28st, May 26th, and June 30th – sharing a post of your latest garden update . Include: 1 current photo, progress, lessons/resources being used, and homeschooler’s reaction / involvement!

2.Grab the button and put it on your site during the challenge (thanks Jolanthe Relevant Designs)

Winners: will be announced July 7th! 3 random winners (who have participated all 4 months) will be chosen !
First 10 participants to link up March 31st will receive a $15.00 CurrClick Gift Certificate. "

THATS RIGHT!!!  It's a contest where you don't have to be successful at gardening...you just have to do it and share a pic of your plant glorious in its death throws (which is what happens when I try to garden indoors) or splendid as it struts its stuff around the square foot beds.

There's also this really cute button.....

let's hope I did it right!  I hope to see you putterin' around your garden as I work to locate the mind I lost as I raked the beds out 2 summers ago.  And, I'll share a picture with you of our seeds.  Some of them are from a few summers ago when I would harvest seed but they're actually 3 years old and I was afraid they wouldn't work so...I bought new seed.  (shhhh!!!!!  Don't tell Ben but Lowe's had a buy 1 get 1 on their organic seed and I soooo cleaned up!! ;) )

Here's the veggie seeds....

Here are the flowers and herbs....

Here is a mixed bag of wildflowers.  I'm so glad I didn't sow these because I'm hoping they'll really take off when I scatter them in about two weeks.  (Ben's taking a WHOLE WEEK OFF!!!!  Yeah!!!  Garden City BABY!!!)

Alright...I'm happy and excited about blogging.  Nice to be back and nice to look forward to dirt under my nails instead of playdough. :)

 

Honey