Spring is here!

Yay, Spring is here! The plan for this summer is to start a vegetable garden so the girls can experience the value of taking care of a living being. Baby steps towards getting a dog. Right?

Thus we head out last weekend to Home Depot to purchase seeds, soil and trays to start the growing process inside. The girls get to pick out their choice of vegetables, which they are all excited about. This completely baffles me since they don’t even like eating vegetables. Round one, the girls ended up fighting over which vegetable seed package they were getting. We quickly move on. Daddy grabs some dirt and trays and we head to check out. $50 later, the happy Hansen family is ready to plant some seeds.

When we get home, Daddy takes the initiative and starts filling the trays with potting soil and hands one off to me. It was great we were a family working together. I made little holes in each section and the girls dropped the seeds in and lightly covered them up. I labeled each section. And we handed the trays back to Daddy to put the final touches on, watering the seeds.

At this point you think what a boring little story. This is where the “Awww what a perfect little family” ends. Somehow the seeds have taken life a little too quickly and the soil starts to rise. In a moment of panic, Daddy starts to push the soil back down. Now most people would stop watering. Go ahead shake your head, I did. No not this Daddy, he continues to put water over the soil and the soil continues to expand. He continues to press the soil back down.

Finally, he grabs the packaging the trays were wrapped in. If he would have read the directions before, he would have figured out we didn’t need soil. The pellets that he thought were fertilizer were actually compressed soil that expands with water. Step One: place seeds in each section, Step Two: Add water, Step Three: You’re done. No extra soil was needed. At this point, we have used most of the seeds and starting over would require a trip back to Home Depot. Oh well, the strong will survive.

The next morning, we set the trays outside and then forgot to bring them in at night. Okay now, the strong will only survive. Strike two. Apparently, a green thumb doesn’t run on this side of the family.

How are the girls going to learn the value of taking care of a dog when their parents can’t even teach them how to plant seeds correctly?