KinderGARDENS - Giving the kids the camera

Welcome back to KinderGARDENS, a weekly post hosted by The Inadvertent Gardener.  This weeks assignment was to give the kids the camera. Telling my two about this they wondered why.  I just told them that we want to see the garden through their eyes.  So here are just a few of the pictures that Shannon and Aiden took....with an explanation as best I can get.

To start us off we will go with Shannon's pictures.

Silly face but taken by herself.  Shannon is holding a Rhubarb leaf.

 Another silly face with the Hyacinth Bean plant

 A very cool picture she took of a Pumpkin flower.

Shannon picked some blackberries and took a quite clear picture of them.

So now that we have seen the talents of my 8 year old lets see what Aiden guy my 4 year old did.

Aiden although only 4 did quite well at getting clear pictures.

 Lemon balm taken quickly yet clearly.

 He made me do it.  I didn't want to pose or get a picture taken but he asked so nicely.

 Running all over the yard Aiden was very selective as to what he chose to take a picture of.  He insisted on this one much like the picture of me.

Yesterday he asked Shannon and I to pose with buddy.  Shannon suggested to do so in front of one of the gardens to keep with the post theme.  Buddy didn't want to look at the camera but thats ok.  Still a good picture.

So thats my contribution to KinderGARDENS for this week.  Stop on over to The Inadvertent Farmer and see what others posted.  Kids are talented.

The Fruits of Mother Natures Labor

Although I would love to take credit for the health of my plants I can't.  Mother Nature is truly the worlds best gardener.  She provides the rain, and the sun.  The 2 essentials for growing plants like this Blackberry vine.

The vine is along the back fence of our yard.  Most of it is actually on our neighbors side but as it is a big bush/vine they can't reach it all...so by default I say that means it is part ours.  I love looking at the vine (from a distance) and seeing all the different colors of the berries.  Some are green, some are white.  Red today black tomorrow.  The more rip they get the easier it is to pick.  Giving us a cup full of blackberries

for the kids to eat.  Even the berries that fall off easily are different shades.  Some are more red than black. Some leave juice on your fingers while others don't.

Each day the Grapes seem to get bigger and bigger.  Soon they too will begin their change of color.  After all the trauma from last year the vine is back and healthy as ever.  See we had some major wind storms last year that knocked the arbor the vine grows on over.  They grew grapes last year but they never ripened or got as big as they are now.  But it seems Mother Nature understood that the vine just needed to stop working so hard to produce grapes last year and work on healing it's self.

After many attempts last year at trying to grow strawberries I finally have a small garden with some plants.  And they are slowly producing berries this year.  I chatted up a lot of folks over at myfolia to find out what in the world I was doing wrong.  Seems the advice worked cause they are thriving this year.

I will never (try my best not to) talk bad about Mother Nature again.  She knows what she is doing and has for some time now.