Planting a Beautiful Mess

Over the weekend Kensi asked if we could plant flower seeds for the backyard. We don’t have a great place to plant her flower seeds at the moment, but it was a great opportunity to teach them about planting seeds and watching them grow. We were already at the home improvement store picking up our supplies to begin tiling the laundry room, so while Finn swiftly napped in the stroller while Livie constantly kicked the back of his seat to wake up, Kensi and I made our way over to the garden section and began scanning the seed packets. One of the very fortunate things about living in coastal North Carolina is spring comes early and it’s our sweetest season. While everyone we know in the midwest and up the east coast are still battling cold temperatures and snowstorms, we’re enjoying the warm sunny days, thunderstorms and our garden section filling up with plants. Kensi and I grazed through all the seed packets and decided to stick with herbs and flowers. We use so many herbs throughout the year, it’s always a go-to when it comes to planting. Kensi was overwhelmed with the flower seed selection. She loves all the colors, shapes and sizes. Explaining each characteristic of the flowers had her intently listening and she chose to plant the beautiful morning glory, our great-grandmother’s favorite: daisy, and the california poppy. We also picked up a few potting essentials so we were ready to plant our seeds later in the week.

I was really hoping to have the kids plant outside for sake of the mess it would accrue, but our temperatures were a little bit cooler today, so I braved it out and set up a gardening station in our dining room. It was a mess, and that’s an understatement, but the kids were so involved in the process and asked questions about the seeds, what helps them grow, why do they need sunshine, what food do they eat? We also read about plants in our animal encyclopedia and watched an episode of Planet Earth about pollination. The kids loved it! And I loved it. It was a productive day of learning and I felt like a super mom!

We marked each seed row using a small kabob stick and washi tape. Then we moved our planted seeds to the window for sunshine and the kids can’t stay away from them. Kensi and Finn are constantly checking to see if they can see any sprouts, even though it’s been a whole 6 hours since planting. They’ve also requested to paint pots for their plants so that will be another activity to share soon!