Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Tonight was one of our best harvests ever! We decided to make Vietnamese summer rolls, and were able to harvest a lot of the items from our own little garden: cilantro, lettuce, mint and carrots. Unfortunately, our cucumber plants are just starting to grow big leaves and put out blossoms, so we needed to buy  a cucumber with our shrimp.

The best part was watching the girls harvest and wash the veggies, roll up their rolls with rice paper, and enjoy leaf veggies with their carrots and cucumbers for the first time. A fun healthy family meal!
Our kale is starting to bush out nicely. Maybe our next garden treat will be kale chips, which are a real hit with Vivi!

Carrots, peas and Pinot Gris

It has been a hectic few weeks and the weather forecast has been all over the map. The last few days however, have been clear and sunny and the garden has responded appropriately! The peas are thriving, the lettuce is turning into heads, and the carrots have gotten big and plump! After dissuading the girls for many days to not pull the carrots, today was the big day.  We also thinned out pea seedlings, and enjoyed Asian-style garlic- sauteed pea shoots, grown fresh in our garden. Paired with miso-marinated marinated black cod and a Grey Monk Pinto Gris, we had a perfect summer's meal to end our weekend!

The first strawberries of 2014

Summer is finally

starting to arrive. We have been watching the strawberry plants starting to bloom, produce green strawberries and finally ripen. Today Chloe and Vivienne tasted the first juicy strawberry that they grew. The smiles on their faces as they bit into the sweet red berry was undeniable.

The peas are coming!

We have had a few rainy days scattered with intermittent sun, and the garden has loved it! It is amazing how much the peas have grown in just a week. The lettuce is getting bushy and the carrots are starting to fill out.

Inspiration: A trip to the UBC Botanical Garden

Chloe's preschool class took a field trip to the UBC Botanical Garden to see how the

bugs and insects they had been studying interacted with the flowers and vegetable plants. We saw may different creatures: slugs, worms, ladybugs, bees, caterpillars and butterflies. We learned how insects pollinate plants. We saw where the bee keeper kept the hives for his honey bees, and we put on finger puppets and practiced pollinating the blooming chive flowers.

Mother's Day at the Secret Garden

Continuing on in a gardening theme, James and the girls surprised me with a Mother's Day tea at the Secret Garden. On the way in we had a chance to look at the beautiful window planter boxes.

Afterwards, we came home and changed into our gardening clothes so that we could plant our seeds: peas and pumpkins!