gardening from scratch

    I spent four hours at a veggie gardening class at our local garden center today.  I came home, brimming with seeds, ideas, and newly acquired insights about growing all sorts of vegetables and fruits in my new raised beds.
    After telling Ron all about it, he said: "Katie, it's like our whole life is from scratch: you are learning to garden from scratch, I am learning to hike and camp and sail from scratch: so much of what we do is being rediscovered from the ground up."
     "That's the thesis of my bog!"  I said.  "Did you know that?  Have you read that?"  He had NOT read that, which I think is sort of adorable.  Yet he came up with the same wording that I have used, on his own!    
     It all feels so new.  The gardening, the child rearing, the home making, the cooking, the spiritual life, the  educating, the lumber yards, the tilling, the composting.  It is thrilling, riveting, and exciting, like a brand new car.  You just want to be in it a little more, and so you take an extra whirl around the block just for kicks.  I've never had a car I felt that way about, but that's how I feel about trying a new gluten- free recipe or making a new compost pile.

     So, gardening idea of the day: buy one packet of radish seeds.  Grow the radishes (super easy), and feed our rabbit (instead of buying rabbit food).  The rabbit poop is used for compost (instead of buying compost).  Use the compost to make an organic salad garden (lettuce and spinach) 9 months out of the year.  So, we are saving on all that organic salad we buy from the store, all that rabbit food, and all that fertilizer.  All with a packet of radish seeds (even though we don't much like to eat radishes).

     Education idea of the day: in my education, "familiarity" was the name of the game.  I was "familiar" with the 50 states, the presidents, and 19th c. continental philosophy by the time I graduated from high school.  But that's why I don't "know" the states and capitals!   Now, at least in the homeschool world, the name of the game is "memorization."  So now, we want our children to memorize the fifty states, the presidents, and the key concepts of continental philosophy.  That gives me the opportunity to memorize all these things for the first time!  Oh, how I love learning them.  I am now downright proficient at the fifty states.   Come on, test me.  I've got 'em.
   Also, new pic Mom just sent us:

Love you, Mom!  (poor Annie looks shell shocked)