Sefton's Garden | By Katie

 Sefton has recently decided he loves snap peas. Anytime he finds a new vegetable or heck, food that he likes, it feels like unlocking a new world of flavors and foods I can give him. 

Another recent upgrade to Sefton's OS (as we say when we notice small ways he has matured) is his insatiable need to "help". We have discovered, the more things we let him in on, the better his behavior is overall as he feeds his innate curiosity and need to be independent. Of course with a 5yo there are still safety and sanity boundaries, but we love bringing him to the table and supporting these desires. It takes a little extra effort on our part, but I feel like in the long run, we'll have a very self-sufficient kid. He is already capable of pouring himself (and cleaning up after!) a bowl of cereal complete with milk. He can make toast and spread a topping of choice, or make a PB&J sandwich. (Which is also a new development in this house by allowing a small tub of peanut butter inside our walls.) Sefton recently started showing an interest in using knives, and rather than find him hurt, we talked about knife safety and what is appropriate for him, and how to cut when a grown up is helping. He successfully prepared an entire sheet pan of chopped vegetables to roast! The other night when making dinner I didn't have any tasks for him, and just needed to get dinner in the oven, instead of shutting him down and demanding he stay out of the kitchen, I asked him to go retrieve some carrots. In 5 minutes he was back from the pantry fridge with 5 carrots in hand. While I finished cooking dinner, Sefton successfully peeled 5 whole carrots himself using a potato peeler and was SO proud. After this he was ready to play with toys, and I had pre-peeled carrots ready for snacks to keep in the fridge. Mission accomplished. 

As he is becoming more interested in our activities, the last trip to the hardware store he found none other than snap pea seed packets! We told him he could pick out an X number (I don't recall now what that was) of seeds to grow. He went to work picking out seeds of varying vegetables, and sunflower seeds (not pictured). 

This last week was been begging me to plant seeds, I didn't have a reason to say no, so we went to work. He did everything from finding my bag of potting soil, going back inside and retrieving his kid scissors, finding one of his own buckets, collecting the plastic potting containers, washing them with the hose (we dunked them in some bleach water to kill any mold/plant diseases), and filling them with the prepared dirt. Hadley of course joined, and was content watching all of the action.

After the containers were filled, he dutifully placed each seed in the little "holes" we created for them, and covered them with "blankets" of dirt. 

We made little flags to label the containers. I still need to find a better solution for this. Last year I tried popsicle sticks with sharpie, and they still faded and broke apart by the time it was time to place into the garden beds. 

These are all planted, and staying warm in front of our sliding window until May when we can safely transplant outside into the garden beds. I still have many things I need to get started, such as tomatoes and peppers. I left garlic and onions in the ground last fall which are already popping up and will be ready to harvest through the summer. 

I ripped up the garden bed full of raspberries to try growing the squash in, hoping watering those will yield more edible items than the dozen pathetic raspberries we got each summer thanks to the deer. I still have more seeds to start of things I want to grow, Sefton's efforts get us off to a good start. He has watered the starts and keeps an eye on them and I'm sure eat everything that grows when they start yielding crops.