The Ozmerican Life

There is nothing like a brother, is there?









Brotherly....Love? I can't quite tell!

Pretty sure they snatched the camera and took a few shots of what boys deem picture worthy...

And let's not forget....
They do think daddy's "truck" is pretty cool, but, they do mention how they miss his 'racecar." They've been brainwashed and their dad happily takes all the credit. It's wrong folks...just plain wrong. But what's a girl to do??

Anyway, while the boys were out fooling around...the girls were doing some real work. Getting our garden ready for the year. As always, it was the first week of June. Pretty late as MN standards go. We never know just how soon the winter will return so it's best to get the earliest head start you can!!

I have to interject here just for a minute with a funnion from today. While Deb and I were neck deep into our card game...the kids were just milling around the kitchen, hovering over us. I told them they better get outside and enjoy the weather because it's going to snow soon. The kids all gasped and I heard a "what????" "did you say snow???" "like how soon mom???" Deb and I quietly giggled with a "Well you never know how soon it just might be! Don't waste the day now!!" It worked, out they went :)

So back to the garden. Deb came up with a new plan for us. Square Foot Gardening. She claimed that we could get all we needed in a fraction of the space, with a fraction of the work! Sounds great, right?

So RDub kindly built us the garden boxes. Then I made Nathan (and 4 kids) trapse around 2 stores with many flatbed carts getting all our supplies. He was a good sport...and he got to buy a power tool for himself....I didn't hear him complaining too much :) Does a weed whipper count? The kids call it a weed whapper. Whip, Whap....let's call the whole thing off....

Then we had to mix all the ingredients that filled the 5 flatbed cards...with shovels, on a tarp, in the wind, with water, 4 kids, all while starting at 4pm on a Sunday evening....seriously the times we pick to do major gardening projects!

One of the ingredients was vermiculite. Anyone....anyone??? Does anyone know what that is? Well we didn't really, until I googled it of course. So where does one buy this...vermiculite? Certainly a garden center would know!! After all, they are in the business of horticulture. We called one store and I got a very young girl who answered us with, 'Uuuummmmm, I don't know, let me go ask." I then called another, "No, we don't carry that." And another, "We don't carry it, and you can't use that in MN." Seriously....looks like we were on our own. It was found on one website so we ordered it up. When I went to the customer service counter to pick it up, the lady pulled the order up, and then a stare and then a, "And......what actually is that?" It seems Amazon's #1 selling book had only made it into Deb's hands and entirely missed the rest of the state.

Here's the magic, no weeds, no work, highly productive garden boxes. We'll see how they live up to their hype....

We finally got them all filled up thanks to Quaid who was a huge help the whole way through!!! We had been mixing all the "stuff" on the tarp with a shovel, and then transported it shovel by shovel to the boxes.

So on the last box Quaid says to me, "Mom, I have an idea but I don't think you'll like it." At this point Deb and I were a bit over the shoveling and figured any suggestion might be a good one...even coming from a 7 year old. "Why don't we just dump the bags in the box and then mix it around in there so we don't have to walk back and forth carrying it." Deb and I shamefully look at eachother, kicking ourselves that we had not thought of that on box #2, and for the fact that we had been shown up by a 7 year old...."That's a GREAT idea Quaid!!" We now had to take our self-proclaimed garden expert hats off and throw them to the wind.
We finally got everything planted...even with a little day light to spare. Now, we'll wait to see what actually comes up!!