Since early February the little one and myself have been lurking around the garden to check whether it’s already worth gardening again. And I am happy to finally announce: the gardening season has started again!!

Spring automatically means getting rid of a lot of weed, clearing the flower beds and starting to grow seedlings on the window bench. Which always confronts me with the problem that we actually don’t have proper window benches. But in a household full of books there will always be a solution how to provide seedlings with enough sunshine…..

intellectual growth….

By now, the garden is almost ready for vegetables and flowers. Which is mainly thanks to my mother who is visiting us right now and who has, with her years and years of gardening experience, an incredible efficient way of weeding. It’s amazing, really.

It is also thanks to the enthusiasm of the little one. I am not sure how long this enthusiasm will last, but I do hope that we’ll benefit from it a little longer. There is such a cuteness in watching a toddler watering plants, pulling out weeds and digging the flower beds. I never thought that we might need a flower bed for an under-two year old, but here we are…the litttle one is growing her own salad and her own flowers (it is just 50 centimeters long, but hey!).

During the last days it has been raining. It has been raining all day long. Still, we made sure to go to the garden  at least once a day, simply because the little one gets cabin fever after a morning at home. Latest at lunchtime she will pack her little basket, look for her rain boots and open the door with the statement: “So! Garden!”. No chance to say no. Though weeding isn’t particularly fun when the soil sticks to your gardening gloves and soaks them within seconds.

I know the so-called Ice Saints are not yet over. I am still tempted to put all the seedlings outside now. It feels like there should finally be vegetables and flowers in the beds….I planned courgettes, pumpkins, various salads, mangetouts (a first!), corn, turnips, beetroot, fennel, potatoes, curly cale (another first) and and and. And, of course, many, many flowers! The strawberries are already flowering and it looks like we’ll have plenty of berries, given that they’ll survive the dreaded berry raiders. So I think I will simply ignore the fact that it is recommended to wait until the middle of May and just bed the last seedlings out. Let the gardening begin!

(There is, of course, some serious gardening going on on our balcony as well. But I think that’ll be another blog post!)