Monday, June 24, 2013

The Season For Gardening





Every Spring my husband eagerly starts working in our raised bed gardens. He tills under the rye grass he planted the previous fall to replenish the nitrogen in the soil, he carefully plants the tomatoes and onions which are the main staples in our garden, and he waters diligently. Then he sits back and watches everything grow until harvest time.

I, on the other hand, take care of the flower garden, planting, weeding, watering, weeding, dead-heading, and weeding. I think you have probably gathered by now that lots of weeding occurs. Both gardens bring us pleasure and delight our visual and olfactory senses as well as our taste buds.

All of this gardening was on my mind when I made my latest trip to the local library, and I sought out some books about gardens that I thought would be just as visually and mentally stimulating as our real life gardens. What I found were two delightful books both which happened to have mice as the main characters (that was not planned).

The first book I chose was Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book was written from a Christian perspective. Mortimer, the mouse, overhears talk about a garden and planting seeds and sets about to find out what a garden is. He then decides to plant a seed of his own, and along the way, he learns patience as he waits for his seed to grow. Mortimer discovers the miracle of God's growing things and come harvest time, his one small seed has multiplied into enough to share.




The second book I chose was called Princess Chamomile's Garden by Hiawyn Oram. Princess Camomile is bored and so the Gardener invites her to work with him in the big garden. But, the big garden is too big and Princess Chamomile sets out to remedy that by planning her very own smaller garden complete with a hopscotch area, hide and seek bushes, a tree house, and so much more.




Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day.

P.S. And don't forget to send me pictures of your children reading for the summer reading program. It can be pictures of them at the library, with their favorite book, or in their favorite reading spot. At the end of summer I will post them for every one to see! You can send them to astewart27@neo.rr.com.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Ready, Set, Read

Today was the first day to sign up for summer reading at our local library, so Emily and I hopped on over. Actually we drove since the library is all the way on the other side of town, but we arrived just the same. We filled out our registration forms, and we filled out our picture consent forms, and we received our library goodie bag replete with a pencil,  a book mark, the summer agenda.

Then we headed to the children's section to pick out some books. While there I also took a picture of the display I created to match the summer theme of "Dig Into A Good Book". Dig could apply to many things such as treasure, dinosaurs, or bulldozers and construction, but I chose dogs since Emily has so many and wouldn't miss a few.






As you can probably tell, I love summer reading and all it involves. I would also be interested to see  pictures of what your kiddos are reading this summer. Pictures of their stacks of books, pictures of them reading in their favorite spot, pictures of them at summer reading events. It doesn't matter, just send them all to astewart27@neo.rr.com.

Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day!