Brody's green thumb

A few weeks ago, Brody came home sad because Maggie (his best friend for the past two years) had saved a seed from her apple and taken it out on the playground, but lost it.  Maggie had gotten upset and Brody tried to her her find it, but it was gone.  Brody remembered that we had seeds leftover from our garden and asked if he could take some in.  I assumed he wanted to take in a single seed for Maggie, but instead he asked if he could take enough for his whole class.  Sure, I had green bean seeds to spare, so Brody took them into class and each kid had their own seed on the playground that day.

Maggie managed to hold onto hers to take home and as they were walking out of the center at the end of the day, Maggie dad asked Jacob "what IS it?"  Jacob had no idea what they were talking about.

Fast forward- Brody's school had an "EMERGENCY" as Brody likes to say, and the sprinkler system malfunctioned, which sent water everywhere, resulting in a ceiling collapse and surprisingly, a fire.  The day care center was closed for over two weeks as they cleaned up the mess, fixed the sprinklers, and finally, passed a fire inspection.  The kids returned to school yesterday and when they went outside for recess, they were surprised to find 20 green bean plants growing in the mulch on the playground.  Amazingly, the plants thrived on neglect at the day care center.  One was already budding flowers!

Within a few minutes of being outside, a kid in the Preschool III class pulled up every plant and was carrying them around as a bouquet.  Brody's teacher, Miss Meena intervened and she and Brody used recess time to replant the green bean plants in the school garden.

Brody is a huge help in our plot at the community garden this year.  He planted a row of green beans all by himself, waters the garden regularly, separates weeds from vegetable plants, and will harvest anything from our garden except the zucchini and cucumber, which are "too prickly".  He's a fantastic spotter of those vegetables though.  Even yesterday, he pointed out a zucchini I'd missed on Friday.  We've nicknamed it Dinosaur due to its size and will use it to make a double batch of zucchini bread.

Logan is still a little young to spend much time at the garden.  The first time he visited with me, he pulled up two pepper plants while weeding and stepped on a few green bean plants, crushing them.  During his second attempt at helping me in the garden, I was chatting with a fellow community gardener and turned around to find Logan standing in the middle of our plot with his pants around his ankles.  Now he only makes quick trips with me, when I'm just there to pick produce or water the plants.  Maybe his green thumb will be ready next year.  I'd love to have two little gardeners!

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In order to entice the boys to join me on a trip to Home Depot, I told them each they could choose a pack of seeds for our garden.  Brody was suckered and jumped into the car.  Logan, our stubborn little boy, chose to stay home with Dada.  At Home Depot, Brody spent a lot of time circling the seed display before finally choosing the watermelon seeds.  Oh man.  I wasn't expecting a plant that would take over the entire garden.  He said he wanted pumpkins too, but I drew the line at one vining plant.

We planted the seeds indoors to get them started, but they didn't take off, so when we went back to choose plants for our community garden plot, we also picked up a watermelon plant.  It was a little thing, just a few leaves in a 4" pot.  Mamie and Paw Paw agreed to host Brody's watermelon plant and planted it on the outer edge of their vegetable garden.  ...And it is happy there!  The plant has grown down a slope and continues to spread.  There are already large fruit on the vines and they're getting big fast.  Anything Brody touches in the garden this year turns to gold.  I will have to look to him more as I'm planning our garden next year.