Kids, Gardens and Rainbarrels

Once May arrives, most people who have vegetable or flower gardens are just itching to get into their gardens to plan and plant. This year was a bit different in that many people still had a few small patches of lingering snow in their gardens. At least this was the case on the benches above Brisco, Golden and Invermere.

For our family, the whole gardening excitement actually begins in about Febuary. We go to the Brisco store/post office and discover that our gardening seed catalogues have arrived and so on a cold, snowy Sunday, after a cross country ski we sit with our hot cocos at the kitchen table and pick the flowers and vegetable seeds that we would like to order.  The descriptions and photos are so enticing that it is difficult not to order one of everything, but with some restraint we are able to narrow down the variety of flowers to a mere 15 instead of 30. This year we splurged a bit on sunflower varieties to include music box, teddy bear, autumn gold and lemon sun to be included in our usual order of the giant sunflower. Both Lillian (10) and Finley (13) insist that we order Alyssium and Nictiana every year, and plant those seeds on the porch near our screen doors because on summer evenings, as the sun sets, they give off a beautiful strong, sweet scent. 

Usually Mother's Day is the day my children and I get things planted, especially the potted planters where they love to put in Tiny Tim Tomatoes so that they can just pluck a few as they ripen instead of wondering out to the garden where they are invariably get seconded into weeding.

Both girls are also allocated a small plot of their own within the vegetable garden where they plan and plant their own miniature vegetable gardens.   Lillian likes to graze on her spinach and kale during the summer while Finley prefers peas and carrots, neither like to grow or eat beets.

Last year for Father's Day, Finley and Lillian decided that it would be a great idea to paint rusted water barrels we use to water our patio plants with nice bright colours and designs. The girls were very enthusiastic about their new endeavour, and they picked the paints, came up with different motifs ideas to paint onto the barrels and enlisted a couple of their friends.  

Unfortunately, their gardening enthusiasm tends to wane a bit during the summer weeding months, until it is time to nibble things before the big fall harvest.  Finley will harvest an entire row of spinach to make her favourite summer meal of fresh spanikopita with a bit of dill to enhance the flavour.  

Pea picking is a communal event for many of the kids who come for sleepovers, and when digging out the potatoes they used to pretend that they were digging for pirates gold, Finley is too old for that now.

Our favourite meal is always Thanksgiving dinner because we make a big effort to serve a sampling of everything that grew in our garden during the summer. We use the decorative sunflowers to brighten up the table before the frost gets at them, and the rest we leave standing, especially the black seeded ones for the birds and garden fairies to enjoy. We make sour cherry chutney from our cherry tree instead of cranberry sauce to accompany our fall feast.  

After the fall (late summer) harvest we also collect seeds for next spring's planting, and it certainly is not limited to sunflower seeds. Calendula always accompanies the vegetable rows and make for a very friendly, cheerful looking garden, and their seeds are very easy and fun to collect. We collect pea, carrot, lettuce, radish, arugula, squash and pepper grass seeds. We would love to collect the dry bush bean seeds but usually end up eating them green because the frost tends to get them before they are dry enough.  

Gardening with my children has been a very rich and rewarding experience; we have all had so much fun, learned so many things and built great memories around gardening. I would highly recommend this for anyone who has children and a patch of dirt, because it has been so enjoyable!!