The Prophet Said To Plant A Garden

Bertrand works about 50-60 hours a week cleaning and repairing pools. And then he comes home and cooks sometimes, helps with the cleaning, helps with the kids. And then suddenly he decides he wants to plant a garden - on top of everything else he does. This guy never ceases to amaze me. He studied up on gardening a bit on the Internet and in books and called a friend for advice and then he spent an entire Saturday working on it.



He rented a rototiller from Home depot and then he and John did some extra shoveling. And he started out planting squash, cucumbers, onions, peppers, radishes, carrots and lettuce, and many more. Within a couple of weeks we had sprouts shooting up out of the ground already. It was really exciting.



While the men worked on the garden, I stayed indoors with the girls who were too afraid of the rototiller engine. I decided to take this opportunity to try to potty train Sylvie-Faye. Chloe decided she wanted to join in the fun too. As you can see from the pictures above, they did more riding around on the scooter like a couple of circus monkeys, and those underpants are way too big for Chloe's tiny little bum. I called her "saggy buns" the whole day. That picture on the end cracks me up. And no - the potty training did not work out. They just wanted to wear the Princess underwear. They didn't want to have to actually sit on the potty.



Within a month our garden looked like this: peas,



squash radishes tomatoes


Bertrand decided not to build a drip system just yet, so the garden has to be hand watered three times a day. We decided John would water it in the morning before school, Sylvie, Chloe and I would water it in the afternoon after I picked them up from daycare, and Bertrand would water it at night when he got home.




The girls LOVE watering the garden. I think they actually like playing with the water more. You better believe I was having evil thoughts on that last picture when I turned the water off and Sylvie was looking down the barrel of the hose asking where the water went. Oh, I so badly wanted to turn it on and squirt her in the face, but I restrained myself. She would have freaked out!




Now that the weather is getting colder, Bertrand spent another half a Saturday building a sort of greenhouse around the garden to protect the plants. They're coming along nicely. I'm so grateful for a hard-working husband. We've already plucked a couple of radishes from the ground and they were so much better than the store bought ones. Ever since I married Bertrand, we've become radish eaters. These ones from our garden were so juicy and extra spicy. Yum! I can't wait to partake of the other fruit and veg.