Planting season - Luna's indoor market garden launched again

For reasons which will become clear in the fullness of time, I only wanted to plant short things this year, in our gardening workshop. Things we can carry without having to cut down a supporting lattice of canes, netting etc. Last year's tomatoes were amazingly tall, productive and resilient - one still giving us fruit until Jim had to chop it down to make space for water-damaged materials from our sodden storeroom last week.

A very willing bunch of short people came along this afternoon to get their hands dirty - but first we needed to d
ocument the seeds (get our hands on them and investigate size, shape, colour etc. We drew pictures of them and had a guess at what they might grow into. Some very interesting ideas such as 'cream', 'ants', 'daikon' & mushrooms...and I can't tell you what they actually were because the packets got mixed up in the rush to prepare this morning! Some seeds were big & round, others so tiny we couldn't pick them up; some long & thin, or prickly-shaped, or like pepper-corns.

 Damian is playing in Tokyo this weekend, so we hijacked his classroom and filled 9 planters with a different set of seeds each - we recycled the soil although Jim did prep with nutrients, water, and a good stir beforehand. Some we drilled holes for, others we sprinkled in a line. In one, we found a bulb which had just started making roots/shoots & quickly re-planted as an extra surprise - was it an avocado maybe, or a tulip bulb? Let's hope we didn't disturb it too much!

The next few weeks will be an exciting wait for shoots to appear - but might be a longer wait than usual as our winter is very cold & snowy this year. Watch this space!

Thank you mums & dads for lending a hand; great to see Susumu back from his London adventures. Thank you Eleanor for big sister job, and to Masa, Sakura, Kai, Minii for your green fingers :)

Mizuki's dream bedroom; KET writing practice

Murray in the bedroom window on the cover of Dream Evil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My dream bedroom is big and square. In the middle of the room there is a big square bed made of wood. There is a very large TV screen on one wall,, and there's a big window on another wall. There is a big sofa next to the bed, and there is a big cat doll on the sofa. There are lamps in the ceiling.

Planting season

This little mission a little overdue, but better late than never!

Glorious sunny morning for a little stroll down to Watahan, grab some seeds & get our hands dirty. We chose some nice colourful flowers, and some easy to maintain vegetables. Hopefully they won't all bloom or blossom or ripen at the same time!

The girls helped dig holes, plop seeds in, cover and add water; some of the water even went on the seeds and not on socks! We were careful to label our  pots this time, and will remember to water everything regularly.

We also saw Mr & Mrs Swallow building a nest under our school, so we will have to keep an eye on them, and hope the landlord doesn't break the nests again. Mr & Mrs Pigeon have laid four shiny white eggs on the other balcony, which should hatch soon.