Gardening

This morning the kids and I trooped off to Mitre 10, in order to (finally) purchase a garden fork that had a handle firmly attached and all prongs accounted for. Fought against urge to buy the cheapest, and got a middle of the range thing that hopefully will fulfill it's intended purpose for a few years at least. We also bought some plants for the playhouse garden, carefully selected by Sophie. It seems the quality of the plants is irrelevant, but the pink count must be high. We now have some rather insipid-looking cherise impatiens planted in a wee planter box, but never mind - she's happy.

We also converted an old plastic clam shell sandpit into a strawberry patch. The kids are both pretty handy with a power drill (comes from 'home' always being some form of construction site!) so we drilled a few drainage holes, filled it with some screened topsoil, and forked through some fancy strawberry compost mix.

All of this has sparked some great learning opportunities - lots of discussion about what plants need to be happy (not little fingers nipping off their leaves, strangely enough - who knew?) and what 'food' looks like for different living things. Soph has a passion for law and order (as long as she makes the rules ;)) and has decided that she'd like to make a sign to ensure that the sun and water are made to feel welcome, and nipping fingers and magpies are not.