“Hi, I’m (insert name).”

The other day we stopped at our favorite local farm stand to see what they had to offer so early in the growing season.  Raven loves to buy their flowers, and last year we had a sunflower and a cosmos as a project for our school.

This year, we went a step further and purchased some starter tomato plants, one Oregon Spring and one Patio plant.  Since I didn’t know if we could have them planted in our little flower bed, we put them in pots and set them on our back porch where there is plenty of sunshine and sprinkles.  We also got Raven her Cosmos, a little pretty plant for Denna (the pinkish one in the herb garden) and some Dill, Parsley, and Mint starter plants.

The tomato plants were my idea, as I hardly ever buy tomatoes from the store.  I am not a huge tomato fan, although I love them on tacos and to make my own salsa.   But the prices of good tomatoes are getting so high, and my favorite, the Roma tomato, is usually not the best looking bunch.  So, having a little crop of tomatoes at home would be perfect, then I can have fresh, vine ripened tomatoes without the price.

The herb garden was all of our idea.  I love herbs, and I love growing them.  A couple years back we tried, but the container we planted them in had no drainage system and they drowned.  This year, we used our left-over Newspaper Recycling bin, since it was heavy duty plastic and had drainage holes on the bottom.  (For some reason, when they gave us rolling cans for recycling, they would not take our bins back.  We had to find a way to use or get rid of 4 big ugly plastic bins)

So, our project in underway, and I must say I have high hopes of juicy tomatoes, fresh dill, parsley, and some very distinctive mint flavoring.  (The mint plant is “orange mint” and it has this wonderful orangy, spearminty smell to it.)

So for less that $13 we have a home school project to observe during the summer, and a little supplement to our groceries.  Hopefully someday we will live in a place where I can teach the girls how to manage a full vegetable garden.  (When I was a girl, we had sweet corn, green beans, melons, pumpkins, strawberries, okra, dill, rhubarb, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, onions, and potatoes in our garden.)