Grandma & Grandpa's Garden

When we were up visiting my parents over Memorial Day weekend, Joshua (and Nathaniel, kind of) helped them plant their garden. He helped plant yellow crookneck squash and green beans. Over the past few months, Mom and Dad have sent him pictures of how the garden has progressed. They also had planted tomatoes and chard. Well, while we were up there last weekend, Joshua got to help Grandpa pick the "fruits" of the garden. He discovered that he liked cherry tomatoes (which he changed his mind about after we got home with two sandwich bags full of them...and Brian doesn't like them and Nathaniel won't eat them, so I've got a bunch to eat), doesn't like squash and still likes beans from Grandma's garden. He watched Grandma can some for us to bring home and saw how they changed color once they were canned (he thought that was interesting).

Here's Nathaniel looking out the bedroom window at Daddy, Grandpa and Joshua. He could hear Joshua and Grandpa, but could only see Daddy from the window I had him in. Silly boy!

We missed out on the raspberries that they have planted alongside the driveway, but we were able to go pick some blackberries at the top of the hill Sunday evening. There's nothing better than fresh blackberries that you pick yourself - those store-bought ones are in no way comparable. Brian and I took the boys on a little walk up the road - that hill seemed much taller when I was a kid...especially the one time I went sledding on it when the city used to block it off when we had plenty of snow. They can't do that anymore since someone built a house on the side of it with the driveway going out to the road...darn progress. Brian was worried about snakes in the blackberry bushes...I told him he didn't need to worry...but watch out for mountain lions. One summer when I was home for a weekend from college, a mountain lion did walk down the street. My sisters and visiting cousins were walking up the street from our grandparents that lived one house down from us. They saw that lion and ran up the driveway of our mutual neighbor's house, climbed the fence into our driveway and hurried in the back door. I was watching this from the kitchen window. I'm not sure if Brian believed me or not...have to have one of my sisters back up that story for me.

Nathaniel was disappointed that I wouldn't take him out of the stroller and let him run around. No shoes, too many stickery weeds - it wasn't going to happen. He showed his annoyance in his diaper - but we finished our walk around a few blocks anyway.