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!

Planting flowers for summer

Once we got over veggie garden going, we took a little trip to Southlands Nursery to find flowers for our patio that will bloom all summer long. We also noticed that our Wisteria had started to bloom graceful purple flowers.