I told her our pitiful little garden didn't produce much. The Lord used her next comment to gently remind me of the more important harvest.
She said to me "Tracy, your "pitiful" little garden (as you named it) grew more than you ate. It grew a lot of family time that will last forever. A plant will die. You gathered a crop and didn't even know it. :) ♥"
She is right.
Here are some pictures from our summer project.
Michael built our garden box.
I helped fill the box with soil.
The girls helped plant.
I placed the markers.
Cari planted the potatoes.
Hannah planted the onions.
We planted some pretty flowers too.
Who can resist all that beauty the Lord has provided?
I love these dirty little hands.
Our first tomato plant.
The frost bit this one. We moved it and planted a new one. After some time though, this plant did produce two small tomatoes.
We planted some herbs too.
We didn't use as much as I had thought, but the most fun we got out of these were picking them and sniffing them and rubbing them and smelling our hands every single time we walked out to the garden. The girls would pick the little leaves or sprigs off and take them to people to smell.
Here is a picture after we planted it.
When the frost came, the next night, Michael built this extention and covered it with a tarp and placed to space heaters under it to keep it warm. He doesn't do anything half way. Space hearters??!! Genius.
Our first sprouts. These are green beans.
These are zuchinni.
Our first strawberry.
We were waiting on this one to turn red. I guess the mockingbird hanging out in our backyard tree had his eye on it too. I caught him in action and ran him off before he ate the whole thing.
I carefully trimmed off the pecked part and washed and divided our first strawberry. All four of us had a taste of the very first fruit that our garden produced.
The first sight of tiny tomatoes on the new plant.
I can already smell the zuchinni bread....
Tada... our first zuchinni.
These onions will find theirselves floating in some pasta sauce.
Cari is washing the onions. She LOVES spaghetti, so she was more than happy to help.
These tomatoes are ripening in the sun by our back window.
Here is the corn we froze. Hannah helped me prepare it for the freezer. Her favorite part was picking the silks off of the corn. Again, praise the Lord for others who share.
Our garden grew...
Looking back through these pictures showed me just how much crop I really did gather.
Crops of smiles, laughter, and memories.