What We've Been Up To

As of now the house we are trying to sell is FINALLY on the market, and we're currently going through everything involved with trying to pretend we don't live in it to keep it clean while actually doing so with a dog that sheds massively and a very active nearly-two-year-old.
I'm REALLY lucky we started it on a holiday weekend. Otherwise I would probably already be in tears. We've already had one thing broken and one thing stolen during the open house, so my formerly excited and cheery outlook has been dampened in all of this.
BUT... in the mean time... I am still, as ever, getting ready for the next step! We will be moving to an apartment where I will be free to have a billion plants and dirt all over the deck, and this makes me AMAZINGLY HAPPY. Somebody just needs to want this house! SEND US GOOD MOJO! And now on to the part where I actually talk about being creative.
I'd been sitting on a project for a long time because I wanted to do it with my little girl. She is absolutely a dirt child, (we have nicknamed her dirt princess for how much she gets in to it) and loves scooping and playing in potting soil and touching plants. We picked out small metal buckets from the dollar bin at Target and I grabbed some fun and easy herb and flower seeds to plant while we were out taking a break from house sell-er-y the other day:

The only downside of this is that while we were in mega OMG HIDE EVERYTHING FOR THE OPEN HOUSE!!!!!!1!!one! mode, they ended up being stashed and we couldn't risk getting dirt everywhere.
So, yeah, there IS part of me resentful that my daughter and I can't have fun developmental playtime because things will get dirty and this might potentially displease people who aren't even going to buy the place.
Well, today it seemed like we had only 2 requests to view the house, and they were both in the morning. So I decided THIS was the best day to just make a mess on the back deck, let my child play in the dirt, and plant seeds together.
It was glorious. I loved every minute, and she loved every minute of it. Allow me to illustrate.

She was all business. I would hand her an empty bucket or pot, and she would scoop soil out of the big blue pot in to whatever was empty. I showed her how to press it down gently, then made holes to put seeds in with my thumb. The seeds may or may not have made it in to the soil. I would give her a few and sometimes she sprinkled them in the pot we were working on, sometimes she threw them in the big blue pot. That's okay, this was a learning period.
So we ended up planting quite a few things, and I became surprised at how many things we had going. I had to actually juggle pots, thinking we'd purchased too many originally.

The first thing we planted were teddy bear sunflowers. I had this image in my head of my daughter hugging a fuzzy plant as high as her. I told her we were making "teddy bears", and she happily dumped all of her seeds in the proper container. It's a bit bland, but as the starter container, it should do nicely. I expect we'll have a few billion because dirt princess did not skimp in seed distribution. I intend to transplant as many as possible, because I utterly ADORE sunflowers, and this is the only sunflower action we'll be seeing this year.




Then after that we planted two different kinds of lavender. We had had a devil of a time locating lavender seeds, probably because it's so popular to grow (and kill, apparently, based on the resale rate). So when I found the last two packets at Target the other day, I snagged them. We have one of just plain Angustifolia, and another of Munstead. What's the difference? Heck if I know. But it's my favorite plant/herb, so I wanted to have some growing on my deck this summer, for transplant next spring in to our official, non-swampy garden! (Please pardon the saddest looking Gerbera daisy in the world behind those two. I bought one at Trader Joe's for my birthday and for some reason it hates life. I'll have to go get another. :( )

Following that came the single hardest won herb seeds ever.... I could find literally NO rosemary seeds at any of six different places I went to. Maybe this is The Year of Rosemary Usage in Food and I missed the memo? So I found an old packet I'd never planted in the midst of packing and set it aside. Will it come up? I sort of doubt it, as I think the seeds are 2 or 3 years old. But if they do, BOOM! My second favorite herb is ready to go! Fingers crossed the seeds are still viable. I long for the days when I lived in the Pacific NW and managed to grow a rosemary bush the size of a dog. I'll settle for a potted lovely that I can move inside and outside with the weather and harvest as necessary.

After that we planted marigolds, because those are always fun and brightly colored, and I thought my girl would love feeling the seeds and seeing how they blew in the wind.... yup, she blew them alllll over the deck. That's okay, though, they gave us a ton in the packet! We also planted another container with teddy bear sunflowers, and a third one with chamomile. I'd initially planned for it to go with my strawberries, but the strawberry jar seems crowded enough already without attempting to side-load herbal starts that might die in the summer's heat. So I'll hang on to them and figure out how to use them to help my baby girl relax better at night. I've also never really enjoyed chamomile tea, and suspect it's because I've tried the heavily manufactured stuff. So I'll harvest the blossoms and see what comes of a pot of fresh brewed chamomile later this summer when I have Huge Baby Belly Syndrome and need help relaxing. And heck, if anybody else loves some, I LOVE to share.

In the end, our outdoor shelf looked quite spectacular with everything all lined up on it next to the already booming strawberries and the Girlchild's Pet Potato that has actually turned in to a potato vine. (Damn proud of that one, might I add! I've never grown potatoes in my LIFE and it's going gangbusters in a pot on the deck! Will need to transplant VERY soon, though!)
In the midst of all the craziness, taking a moment to do a bit of Earth Mothering and letting my child experience dirt and growing things made me feel good. It took away all the pent up frustration and the feeling that there is nothing of ME or my family left in this house, as we desperately try to cater to strangers walking through. The deck swept off easily enough, my daughter wiped down without issue, and we have lots of fun little plants to look forward to. I also got to create something, and my severe need to nurture and grow stuff that has come along with this pregnancy has been sated, if ever so briefly.

Plus... dirt princess had herself one hell of a time. Look at that. That child is walking with PURPOSE. Even if it WAS to dump dirt in the citronella candle, since it was the only bucket lacking soil.













The next project will be aimed at this bad boy, picked up on sale at JoAnne Fabrics for a ridiculous percentage of what they were originally asking. I have always wanted a Savage Garden filled with carnivorous plants, and once I get the seams coated with silicon and the base painted for water resistance, I'm gonna have me a fancy terrarium marsh of meat eaters!

And now... goodnight. We're super tired after wearing ourselves out with all of this good, earthy fun, and we're still kinda dirty and stinky and it's time for bath time and sleep time. Thanks for stopping by!