"Elder" Explorers as told by Spaulding, Teddy, and Phil

Yesterday, our sons referred to Teddy as an "elder." We need to clear this up. Spaulding is ten, Teddy is eight and Phil is one and a half. Ding is nine and Tee is seven. So, whooooooooooooo are the "elders?" Just saying!

So, anyway, as "elders," we have to be more productive when we explore the garden. We're still kids and teddy bears, so we're having fun, but we're productive in our fun. We explore to see how everything is growing. Our Garden Gals need full reports, even if they come out every day to check, too. So, here is what we do in the garden.

This is fun to climb, but we're checking out the asters. The leaves are nice and soft when they're little, kinda like Lamb's Ear. These asters are called "Wonder of Staffa." We've had them for two years and are still wondering who or what Staffa is.

Another good excuse to climb. Our pea vine is starting to bloom. Too bad it's not a bean vine. Who knows? We could find a giant at the top.

Can you see the flowers by Phil's left foot? They smell as pretty as Sweet Peas. The peas start popping out right out of the flower. We took this picture last week, and ate the two snap peas in a stir-fry last night. We would have showed you the peas, but it's been rainy. More flowers and peas are coming now, so, if it would quit raining, we can take a picture, eventually.

Underneath our pea vine are tomatoes. Spaulding is demonstrating how tall our one tomato plant is. He can hide under it.

Here are our other tomatoes. We bought all five tomatoes on the same day, but these aren't as tall. We found a couple surprises though.

Phil is looking at our first tomato flower. It's right above his left paw.

Teddy is showing what else we're growing in that container. He's touching one, while pointing at another. We bought onion sets this year, and are hoping the onion smell will discourage squirrels from eating our maters. That and onions tasteses good, too.

Remember how Phil saved some dill when we were weeding? He has become the official dill keeper now. That's Phil's dills.

And, since Teddy's wife is Valentine, the stuffed bunny, Teddy has to check on her carrots, too. They sure look ready to eat to us!

We have a swing in our garden. Well, it's not a regular swing. It holds our patio tomato, because we don't have a patio. Phil's swinging and checking the tomato's progress.

Right below the swing is our Red Romaine lettuce. It's now big enough to make a soft landing, when Phil jumps off the swing.

It finally got warm enough at night to bring out the aloe. Aloe isn't supposed to be that big, but Mommy left it away from direct sunlight for too long, so it grew into the sunlight. After this picture was taken, we cut back its roots and transplanted her babies. She had three more babies last winter. We also checked out the bay and other herbs.

Spaulding checked out our English Lamb's Ear. We bought it last year, and it didn't do anything, include grow. Now look how big it is! And it's about to flower. Regular Lamb's Ear doesn't bloom magenta flowers. (We're married, so we've learned girlie words for pink.) If you look closely at the top of the stalks on the right, you can see the one ready to bloom.

He came back out two days later to have his picture taken with the blooming flowers. (Okay, something weird is happening. The phot os prepared to fit horizontally through out photo fixing program, but when we upload it, it keeps uploaing vertically, ans side way. We can't fix it, so look at it side ways. Sorry.)

Two days later, it was ready to rain, so Daddy took this picture without Spaulding coming out.

And that's how "the elderly" explore our garden.