Big Dig

Garden time at the Boys' Club is shaping up to be my favorite part of each week. There have been lots of complications: the garden was hijacked for an hour by a rogue digger once and it took us two hours to get it back the way we had it....the faucet for the hose is broken and we have to use a screwdriver to turn the water on and off....pollen season is upon us and one kid can't come outside until it's over because of severe allergies....the kids are unruly and easily distracted..... but they are so genuine and sweet and smart, and they are LOVING the garden. Ah, it's so good, it is making me so happy.

Here are photos from the Big Dig a couple weeks ago -

Big Dig, 3/13/07

And here are more from garden club activities over the past couple weeks:

Boys' Club Garden - 3/07

Yesterday, we planted most of our seeds in the ground. Planting was always my favorite part of gardening when I was a kid, but then I think I was the type to map everything out on graph paper and measure and plot and all that nerdy stuff. Planting seeds actually seemed to stress the boys out yesterday.....the seeds are too small, the spacing is hard to get right, they'd cover seeds up and then forget where they'd planted.... When all was said and done, though, it doesn't matter a whole lot where your seeds end up, so long as they're in there somewhere - we can transplant the strays later.
So, one of the boys was planting onion sets with me yesterday. He was squatting on one side of the bed, and I was on the other. He said to me, "you know, I'm thinking about planting a garden at home."
"Oh yeah?" I said, "what kind of garden?"
"A vegetable garden. I was telling my family about this garden and my aunt asked me to help her plant a garden."
"That's great!" I said.
"Yeah, I think gardening is pretty fun. Maybe I'll plant tomatoes. Or squash."

My heart swelled. All this kid has done so far in our garden is dig and dig and dig, and then plant seeds and water. It's been three weeks. Nothing has been eaten or picked or even looks like something you could pick or eat yet, and already, he's having fun. Yesssssss!