Last Day of School

The last day of school has come and gone. Conall will be entering first grade next year. For an end of the year gift for his teacher, Ms. Dorman, he gave her an echinacea plant.
At the beginning of the year Conall argued with Ms. Dorman about the name of the coneflower plant they were planting in the Kindergarten garden. He kept telling her it wasn't a coneflower, it was an echinacea plant. She didn't believe him and kept correcting him. Later in the day, she looked it up and realized that echinacea is another name for the coneflower plant. She was amazed that he knew such a big word and had him repeat it for other adults when they visited the classroom. I think she got quite a kick out of it! So, we gave her an echinacea plant for her end of the year gift. She told Conall that she was going to name it "Conall' which he thinks is really funny!

Conall, Ms. Dorman and "Conall" the echinacea plant

Gardener Conall

Conall has another garden this year. He got a gift of money from Aunt Jackie and Uncle Bill for Easter. He wanted to use the money to buy plants for this year's garden, and Caitlin decided to do the same with her gift. They bought Roma tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes (Caitlin picked out a "pink" tomato plant), grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, a bell pepper plant, a strawberry plant, a watermelon plant, two basil plants, some marigolds and a jalapeno plant (for Po Po and Pop Pop).
We also had some seeds for green beans, cucumbers, and flowers. We had already started the garden off with a rosemary plant. As always with Conall's plants, the plants are flourishing. They are healthy and he has at least 10 green tomatoes, if not more. The kids have already eaten about 6 strawberries and there are more growing. I am interested to see if we actually get a watermelon from our plant!

Conall showing his garden off to the neighbor boy

Mommy, I'm Muddy!

Caitlin and Conall were playing outside this afternoon in our freshly tilled "garden". Our next door neighbor was kind enough to till Conall's vegetable garden area when he had the tiller out before all of the rain this weekend. The kids have had a ton of fun playing in the dirt ever since.

Caitlin got some water and made it a little muddy this afternoon. She, of course, got muddy playing in it. Conall was quite disturbed that she had done this and upset that she was going to mess up his garden. I thought it was funny -- she giggled and looked at me with a huge smile and said "Mommy, I'm muddy!". I had her repeat it for the camera.

My muddy little tomboy

Mommy Will You Take a Picture of Me ....

Conall's Na Na is going to start doing his scrapbook again. She did it for his first year and then I took over. And, then life took over and I got so behind that there wasn't any hope that I'd catch up anytime soon.

Conall is SO excited about "my scrapbook." He keeps asking me to take a picture of "me doing ..." fill in the blank and you've got it.

Na Na asked me to take a picture of him with his garden. It really has grown since earlier this spring and he's so proud of it that he was happy to "pose." And, last night, he came in from playing in the back yard and asked me to take a picture of him with Strider. That took more effort than Conall imagined because Strider won't sit still! Here are those photos.

Conall's Garden

Here are pictures of Conall's garden that I took yesterday. He is so proud of it!

Acorn squash, yellow squash, green beans, pumpkins


Green beans and pumpkins

Cherry tomato plant

Tomato plant

More green beans to transplant, a cactus plant, and Nasturtium flowers

Conall's Garden Sign

While at Pop Pop's, Conall "planted" a garden with flowers he'd picked from elsewhere in the yard. Conall also built a sign to put in the garden that he told me said "No hornets or babies allowed" because they would stomp on or mess up his garden. He was very serious about it and kept checking to make sure his sign hadn't fallen down. Here are pictures of it -- pretty funny!