Noah's Garden

Due to visitors and a few doctor's appointments, I'm a little behind on posting.  Oops! There's Easter pics and several other fun homeschool activities that require sharing and I promise I'll try to get to those as soon as possible. :)  In the meantime, I thought I'd show you a little "Noah" project we completed while Chris was on leave:

Our Herb, Tomato, and Strawberry Gardening Project

The perimeter of our backyard is lined with these awesome, low maintenance ferns...except for this one spot. It just didn't seem to get just the right amount of sun and water and so the ferns slowly disappeared and grass sprung up where ferns once grew, throwing off the balance of our little piece of backyard paradise.  Chris and I have been discussing what to do with this bare patch for two years and just couldn't come up with a solution we were really happy with  - transplanting more ferns seemed "out" as they'd just die like their predecessors and building a raised flower bed (the ground is rock hard underneath) just seemed like too much work and expense.  We tried a bird feeder, but reconsidered after the birds managed to happily decorate the fence with the leavings of all their feasting.  (We didn't want our neighbors to hate us, so the feeder was moved to another location).  And so a whiskey barrel herb garden came to mind:  easy and inexpensive to create, low maintenance, and a great way to add some fresh flavor to improve my cooking!  It would also make for a great homeschool gardening project to help provide lessons in patience, care, and responsibility for the littlest Dudley, which is something else Chris and I were pretty stoked about.  Apparently Noah was more than stoked about it, too, because he stole out of the house this morning while I was in the shower to get the following pictures and videos on my iPhone: 

I'm really glad he's excited about it, although not so happy that he went into the backyard unattended.  We'll have to work on that one. :)

So, that's our whiskey barrel garden.  We planted basil, thyme, strawberries, tomatoes, and various peppers and can't wait to see the fruits of our labor. We're also looking forward to someday having the space to have a REAL garden - complete with lettuce, squash, beans (that was actually rosemary that N pointed out in the video), and cucumbers - but that'll have to wait for another duty station.  In the meantime, we're pretty happy to watch these little guys grow and flourish in their cute little space in our backyard!