Backyard Fun/Gardening

Here's our garden with the dirt piles Dad brought over yesterday. The dirt was so lush and rich, full of worms and "creatures" (aka: bugs). Good stuff!

Here's Dad unloading the dirt. I was holding Norah and could no longer help. Isn't he awesome?!!!

Avonlea climbing her tree.

Lincoln climbing some block pavers.

Don't you just love Pentas?! They grow great here in Florida, butterflies and bees love them and they come in all sorts of beautiful colors.

I need to look up this flower. (I'll bet my mother-in-law knows what it is!) =) It's gorgeous though huh?

I love all the twisty vines growing in our backyard. Makes me think of the movie "Jumanji".

Lots of shrubbery...

The kids and I were playing outside yesterday (like we do everyday) and I was just thanking our Maker for such beautiful nature in our backyard. We are so blessed to have a large backyard for the kids to play in, explore and learn about nature. I decided to grab my camera and show you a little of our paradise. =) Some things I love about our backyard are: our playground that Rob built from scratch (no plans or anything...just started building it one day!), our butterfly house (yet another Rob creation) that we love watching the life cycle of a butterfly in, our back porch (floods terribly when it rains, but it's SO nice to have), the space to run, little pathways to follow, tons of huge shade trees (only bad thing about this is that we can't get grass to grow, but I vote for shade over grass anyday!), bushes, little nooks and crannies to explore and my personal favorite, our garden. Yesterday, Dad brought over 4 huge barrels of AMAZINGLY rich composted dirt and I'm going to be mixing it into our already laid dirt in each of our garden planters. I'll be planting all the seeds tomorrow in little planters (I save all the little annual planters from Home Depot...you know, the kind that have 12 little squares in a pack). The planters will go into the butterfly house which is totally enclosed with netting so the squirrels and birds don't get at them. Then, when they've all sprouted, the kids and I transplant them into the big garden and watch them grow. =) I'm getting excited just thinking about tomorrow! I'm such a nerd. I know.

One thing the kids and I did was to take out a large majority of the worms in our new dirt. "Why would you do this?" you may be thinking. Well, to put it bluntly, the worms have already done their job by eating the leaves and "good stuff" in the dirt and making worm casings (yep, poop). So, we took out the worms and will transfer them into our compost bin out back. We'll be throwing lots of organic compost (rotting fruits, veggies, etc.) into it with leaves, dirt and grass. It has to be turned often (once a week or so) and the worms will eat up this food, reproduce and make some amazing composted dirt! We have about 30 worms in a jar right now waiting to be transferred into our compost. We'll see how this goes as I've never done this before. I keep telling Dad that he needs to start a gardening blog (hint, hint Dad!!!!).