garden gift

The past few years, we have managed to get our garden in on Memorial Day weekend. I always considered that to be horribly late... until this year. This Memorial Day weekend, I spent half of it in the hospital worrying about a dehydrated kid, and the rest of it recovering from that episode. Secondo and I had cleared half of the beds the day of that fateful track meet, but were unable to capitalize on our hard work.

Actually, this was the second time the beds had been cleaned this spring. The picture above is from spring break, when the two older boys were making good on their birthday present to me: cleaning out the beds. Unfortunately, they failed to cover the beds and so we were back to... well, not square one. Maybe square three.

Today was do-or-die as far as getting a garden in. We FINALLY had a day with a block of free time, when most of us were home and could pitch and help.

There was quite a bit of hoeing:

And planting:

And waiting patiently for someone to take a break and feed the dog.

My best helper, by far, was Secondo. Planting the garden was his Mother's Day gift to me. These boys are most excellent gift-givers.

He spent most of yesterday clearing the rest of the beds by himself. He helped me shop for plants today, then worked on getting everything into the ground. He hung into the bitter end, blisters and all. About three hours in, I said, "Well, I bet this is the last time I get this present."

"No," he replied. "I was thinking just the opposite."