My Little Farmers

You've really got to love living in a town with a feed/farm store. We are guaranteed an hour of free entertainment during chick/duckling season, and bonus time if it is also vegetable/flower season. Yesterday I took the littles there, and we wandered and giggled and said "aaaaaaw" a thousand times. Her Highness fell in love with the pink cowboy boots. We walked through the garden area and learned just how many varieties of tomato plants you can grow. They have so many that they alphabetize them! So, the Princess wants to grow cucumbers and Toad wanted to try a crazy dark purple bell pepper. We do not have the best track record with growing vegetables. Our best year yielded two zucchinis. Not two plants, two bushels or two pounds. Just two zucchinis. They were big and delicious, but at some point you have to admit defeat. I embraced it long ago, but the kids haven't quite caught up. So we'll be babying our little cukes and purple peppers this summer. Do you think Peter Piper picked any Purple Peppers? The kiddos are also hoping that our mysterious pumpkin patch appears this year. We carved pumpkins in the front yard a few years ago and the next two summers we had a gorgeous "magical" pumpkin patch in our flowerbed. Apparently the things we plant unintentionally do very well! Last year, not a pumpkin to be seen. They all thought it was because we dug up a lot of that bed and built a wall, so the seeds were afraid. All I am going to admit is that I am fairly sure that there are pumpkin seeds in the right spot this year. None of the kids read the blog, so they'll be just as excited this year when the vines start winding around our fountain. There is something to be said for letting them believe in magic for one more summer.