My Pinterest Garden

Tonight I had a little ah-ha moment. After I put Carter to bed and looked though the pictures of the day, I realized I will want to remember this tender moment I had with my little man tonight.

 The last couple weeks i've been staring at the seedlings I started about a month ago. I needed to really get those in my garden. But, I've lost all hope in that garden. I fight the weeds, the neighbors cat poop, the diseases, and literally end up with one carrot in the end. And now, I fight Carter. He thinks its the best place to hang out, leaving all the plants smashed and half dead. Tonight I put Brighton to bed and headed out back with Carter to watch him drive his tractor and stare at my garden that needed attention. Then I had this weird, crazy, idea.

Why not make it Carters garden? He LOVES to help me do whatever I'm doing, and its not like we need the garden to feed our family. Its just a hobby garden, might as well make it something he could learn from. He may be a little young but oh well.  I grabbed the seedlings, a kitchen spoon and called Carter over. He was a little nervous to jump in with me since there has been a lot of scoldings lately whenever he's near it. I asked him to help dig and thats all the convincing he needed...shocking, really.  We "tilled" the area with our spoons and then leveled the dirt. He was so excited and yelled "DID IT!" over and over. I then taught him how to dig a little hole, pull the seedling out and stick them in the ground. Then we covered it, did a little pat pat pat and moved on to the next. The garden looks horrible. The plants are in super uneven rows, 90% of the seedlings were damaged in the process and the already planted lettuce may be smashed flat by Carter oh so cute but oh so wild jumping bean feet.  We headed to get the watering can, filled it with fertilizer and I handed it to Carter to feed his plants, 1 of them was lucky enough to get the whole watering jug, the rest were left to fend for themselves.

It turns out it planing with Carter totally refreshed my outlook on parenting, yet again this kid taught me something pretty great, he's pretty good at that.  I did something simple, and Carter loved it. He learned to say plant, carrot, and even maybe learned how to be a little softer (kid is freaking rough). I learned that its ok to not have a everything perfect. Pinterest gardens got nothing on this Carter version. Some things dont matter, some things do. Tonight I spent some one on one time with my bug and my garden was finally planted. Win, win, win.