Gardening | Crafty Dad

Warning! Big photos ahead.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

Picking out tomato plants with Matt. He’s my official garden helper!

Country Living Magazine. I’ve been a subscriber for many, many years.

Homemade (of course) pasta salad. Nate loves the stuff and has been taking it in his lunch bag for the past few weeks.

Fels Naptha and Lava soap. Two mainstays in the laundry room. You can’t go wrong with the classics!

Farm-fresh eggs and sweet peppers. A guy at work has chickens and brings me eggs every couple of weeks. The peppers are store-bought.

The boardwalk at Carolina Beach, NC. We’ve vacationed there for three years and love the little town. Renting a condo on the beach is one of the smartest things we’ve ever done.

What are your favorite things these days? Leave a comment to let me know.

Whistle While You Work

Posted on March 2, 2013 Written by Crafty Dad 2 Comments

Garden Memories

I’m not a big whistler. Oh, once in a awhile I’ll whistle a little tune, but it’s rare.

My grandfather was the king of whistling. All the time. It’s one of the special things I remember about him.

He was good at a lot of things. Gardening was his passion. And that bit of DNA has been passed on to me.

Matt (my 12-year old) and I are strongly considering a community garden again this year. We opted out of gardening last year — there were just too many things going on.

We missed our garden. The trips to the plot in the pickup truck. The stops at Penguin Point for a burger and fries after an hour or so of hoe-ing, watering, and weeding our 20 x 40 foot patch.

Yes, we got REALLY aggressive (a/k/a foolish) and tended TWO 20 x 20 plots in 2011.

Even after washing up for dinner, I’m sure we had dirt under our fingernails when we were eating. We didn’t care — we were farmers. It didn’t matter. : – )

This year’s plan

I’ve done some research and found that, due to budget cuts, the community garden will no longer be handled by the City. It’s been handed over to the Master Gardener club. I’m okay with that.

My contact at the Environmental Center says he has a meeting with the leaders of the Master Garden Club this coming week.

I’m waiting to hear how their meeting goes. I am hopeful. We are hopeful.

Matt and I are thinking positive, green-growing thoughts that we get to rent a 20 x 20 foot space for this season. We REALLY want to get our hands in the dirt.

There’s something really awesome about planting some seeds and seeing them produce a harvest. You can almost watch cucumbers and zucchinis grow before your very eyes. That’s how much they can change in just 24 hours.

It’s amazing. It’s nature.