Our Garden, "Aldada"

This is the first year we've had a garden.  When it came to naming it, we called an official meeting.  Myself and all 5 children sat in a circle in the backyard.  Each of us were in a lawn chair except Silas who was sitting on a blanket.  Everyone had their own ideas.  Isaiah suggested "The Reeves Mighty Garden of Life".  Ana wanted to use the word "sparkle" in the name somehow.  Eli wanted there to be a reference to Power Rangers in the name.  Malakai liked every one's ideas.  I tried to make everyone happy, coming up with names like "The Mighty Sparkling Power Ranger Garden".  No one liked that!

Then, I said, "There is one person whose opinion we haven't heard, guys."  I turned to Silas, "Silas, what do YOU want to name the garden, buddy?"

Silas quickly replied, "Al-dada".  Everyone was so delighted with Silas's response that "Aldada" won the name debate unanimously!

We started kind of late, and are learning a lot about gardening.  The heat and drought has been hard on Aldada too.  Here's some pictures of the kids showing different parts of Aldada:

Pumpkins

We saw our first bloom on one of the pumpkin plants today!

Herbs

We have lavender, rosemary, oregano, sage, basil, thyme, and catnip.

Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Red Peppers, Carrots, and Lettuce

The tomatoes are doing pretty well.  We started getting our first little cucumber today.  The red peppers are not producing anything yet.  The carrots don't seem to be growing much at all the last few weeks.  The lettuce is basically. . . pitiful.  This heat and dry weather has not been friendly to some of our little plants!  

"The Hills"

Yesterday, I let the middle 3 plant some watermelon seeds, little pumpkin seeds, and big pumpkin seeds.   Isaiah was at a party, and Silas supervised the gardening.  That bed still needed to be edged, and we were going to get some mushroom mulch for it.  However, since it is mid-August, my thought is that these things will never get done, and the most likely result would be wasting those seeds.  So, I told them to make little hills in a row, and I let them pick what they wanted to plant.  Some of the hills are too close together, but I don't care at this point.  It's probably too late to get a harvest from them anyway.  We'll see!!