The Garden

So I have this garden in my backyard ... OK, it is really more like a park.  3 levels, a pond with a waterfall, 9 oak trees, hostas and perennials beds, wood chips, stone path.  I wish I could take complete credit for it, but the lady who lived here before us put her heart and soul into building it.  I am making improvements to it as I can.

So I have made rules for the girls:  PLEASE stay on the paths or the wood chips.  Do not go exploring through the foliage.  Stuff like that.  We bought them a play house that I put in the back corner of the garden so they could occupy themselves as mom pulls weeds. 

I had no idea that they had been digging in the dirt themselves - the flowerbox on the playhouse had a gross mixture of rainwater, dandelion stems, and dirt.  The girls who have up until this point been afraid of box elder bugs and gnats have started picking up millipedes and wanting to keep and feed inchworms in the hope that they would become a butterfly. 

Unfortunately they went stomping through the foliage and trampled down about half of my oriental poppys.  I'm rather attached to those poppys and was rather upset that they had met their demise under the feet of young children.  I needed space to process.  On one hand, they ruined some flowers that were going to make great pictures in about a week.  On the other hand, they are my girls and I love them more than any old flower in the garden AND they weren't acting like princesses and being all squeamish about bugs in the garden.  Deep breath ... Get over it Paula. 

So we all had a good day in the garden.  I put down a stone floor in the girl's playhouse so they wouldn't get quite so dirty.  And we cleaned out that disgusting mixture in the flowerbox and planted some impatiens.