Fourth of July Weekend

So we had an extremely busy Fourth of July weekend and I thought I'd just share a few photos. This is what my vegetable garden looks like now. I've got nine large rectangular beds plus four smaller square ones. This year I tried to do companion plantings- that is plants that are beneficial to each other. I also planted some flowers- marigolds, nasturium, dahlias, bee balm and sunflowers. I've got two beds planted with tomatoes (plus basil and bee balm), one bed with cucumbers (the one with the A-frame you see), one bed is full of beets and collards and a few peas, one bed is peppers, one bed as Swiss chard, spinach, garlic, bok choi and now sunflowers, one bed has lettuce, carrots, onions and radishes, another bed has zucchini plants, soybeans and nasturium and the last bed is just strawberries (plus flowers for this year). The square beds have pole beans and marigolds. There is a separate winter squash bed. I also have several hills of potatoes planted. It's unbelievable that I have to water considering that a few weeks ago the Potosi area was flooded.

Recent art projects:

I've found all sorts of blogs that demonstrate cool arts and crafts projects you can do with children. Here the girls are having fun making butterflies out of coffee filters. First you color the coffee filters with markers and then spray them down with water (for a water color effect). Let them dry completely and then use a pipe cleaner to twist around the wings and create the antennae. I need to take a photo of the finished product.

We also did a little watercoloring. We tried using straws to blow the paint around on the paper for a different effect. The girls couldn't quite get the hang of doing that.

We cut the watercolor artwork into strips (the girls helped with the cutting) and then we glued those strips on to cards to create one-of-a-kind cards.