Growing things...garden and kids

I took the girls and Adrian to Bartram's Gardens with my friend Kathleen the other day. We have been so lucky this spring with generally mild weather--cool evenings, pleasant in the shade, warm in the sun. Living in Philadelphia, it is essential to enjoy nice weather while it lasts so we have been trying to get out as much as possible. Bartram's Gardens is the oldest active botanical garden in the country, and it is right smack in Wes Philly, just about 2 miles from my house. It is a perfect West Philly type of place--a little weedy, staffed mostly with earnest volunteers, but absolutely lovely and with lots of amazing native plants and cool activities for kids. We had already gone to a few things this spring, so the girls are getting used to being there.




I think some of my pregnancy 'nesting' this time went into the garden. I'm thinking maybe that's why I didn't get even half the stuff done I had planned before Adrian was born. But our garden is looking pretty awesome with sunflowers taller than me (no blooms yet), tons of basil, parsley and crazy out of control bean vines. I've been loving checking out what's going on each morning, weeding, picking the suckers of the tomatoes. We'll see how I'm feeling when the hot weather arrives in earnest, but for now, it's a pleasure. We've been eating raspberries, lettuce, cucumbers and snow peas. Kathleen made us practically a year's supply of pesto already and our babysitter Jax who is a pretty awesome gardener herself claims she had garden envy.