Britmums have joined forces with Money Supermarket to launch a fun Kids Grow Wild challenge. As well as giving us the opportunity to get green fingered in the garden, the campaign also aims to remind people to check that their home insurance policy covers the garden and any equipment you may have bought for it.
One of my biggest regrets about living at The Madhouse is that we don't have a garden. There's a big park literally across the road so the kids get to play outside in natural surroundings and run off steam whenever they want to and we do have a big patio, so we still manage to grow lots of things in pots and containers. Every year, we grow lots of flowers, as well as chives, mint and bowlfuls of cherry tomatoes and this year we've successfully tried growing lettuces too. Our strawberry, raspberry and blackberry plants never seem to want to give fruit though, sadly.
After signing up to join in the challenge, we received a lovely child's gardening set, including everything we needed to get busy in amongst the plants.
Pierre excitedly discovered the gloves, trowel, fork, seeds and - his favourite - the watering can.
First of all, he gave a much needed drink to the cherry tomatoes and I pointed out the little yellow flowers to him, explaining that they would become little tomatoes.
Next, he moved over to the "wild flower" container which has been left to do its own thing - many people call them weeds but I prefer the term wild flowers as some of them are really beautiful. I planted a couple of packets of wild flower seeds last year - one to attract bees and one to attract butterflies - and we had some beautiful red poppies in there until a couple of weeks ago, when they wind blew them to bits. I told Pierre he could have a dig about with the trowel and the fork, which he did, although he still couldn't be persuaded to put his watering can down ! He squealed with a mixture of delight and horror when he uncovered a big worm and a fat slug !
Time to get back to his favourite pastime - watering. This time, he watered our salad plants - we have three or four different varieties of lettuce growing and we've already eaten a couple of them. I love eating things that we've grown ourselves - it's probably purely psychological but it always tastes so much better. You can see the last few of those poppies I mentioned too.
Like father like son !
Disclosure : This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge
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Lovely photos! I didn't realise you don't have a garden. Our tomatoes are doing well so far, fingers crossed, already lots of teeny weeny toms. Last year it was a battle with caterpillars, eww, hate them.
ReplyDeleteYou are really making things pretty. Commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums and thanking you for taking part
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