Gardening with Angie

Chas and I are probably too much the control freaks to garden with a nearly four year old. There is a lot of "No dig here, not there." "Angie don't put the shovel there." "Can you water these plants sweetie? No these plants."

Of course some of it is for her own good: "Don't run with the shovel Angie." "Don't dig in the bucket when Daddy is mixing with the pitchfork."

She is a pretty good helper though when given instructions. She just has it in her head that when gardening, you always dig things up. Every day.

She is very excited about the Zinnias. She and I put seeds in little peat pellets today. With any luck, in a few months, we'll have some marigolds, zinnias and flox grown from seed.

Today she and I also put out a bell covered in seeds for the birds. She picked the location (on the fence in the backyard) and I tied it to the fence. When I was done (actually as I was tying on the bell and for most of the afternoon thereafter), Angie started calling out to the birds in a sing-song voice, "Oh little birds! Come see what Mommy has brought you! She brought you a snack little birds." Then Angie built a nest for the birds by placing a few twigs and a leaf where a low branch emerges from the tree trunk. "Oh little birds! I built a nest for you.!"

I convinced her briefly to step away from the bell and sit on the back steps with me to see if the birds would start feeding. She decided that wasn't working so well. Upon her instruction, she and I started flapping around the back yard while tweet-tweeting to encourage the birds to drop by for a snack.

It was a very busy afternoon as you can see.