Joy Is...

cutting fresh herbs right from your windowsill to use in dinner.

Speaking of Plants

Everyone is doing pretty well. Some may even need to be transplanted to bigger containers already. Here they are:

parsley

oregano

basil

Sunflowers (Jr. on the left, Nichole on the right)

romaine lettuce

tomato

pumpkin

banana pepper (not quite ready to be transplanted)

Stone Soup

In the story, "Stone Soup," a town comes together to contribute what little food they individually have in order to feed everyone.
For dinner, we made our own version of stone soup... minus the stone. Jr. helped me chop up vegetables while Nichole was at school. I added ingredients (a little bit of everything) to make a big pot for Jeremy and me before he went to work.

Then I gave Nichole and Jr. each a pot to make their own soup. We read the story while the water heated up

then the kids added ingredients they wanted from what Jr. and I had out on the table. Nichole's soup ended up very simple (no vegetables- I got her to eat some carrot sticks later). Jr. got caught up in the excitement of adding ingredients; he didn't think about actually eating it later (which he didn't eat much).

One of the neat things about this (besides my picky little girl actually eating her dinner) was that we got to try out some of our fresh parsley, oregano, and basil.

Just a little bit, but it's exciting to have them big enough to even use a little.

Plant a Seed

Jeremy won a mini herb greenhouse from Vineyard Garden Center in Orem. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity to share a Family Home Evening lesson about faith. And actually plant an herb garden since I never got around to it when Jeremy bought me stuff for planting herbs 2 years ago for Valentine's Day. (hangs head in shame). But this time we did it.
It had seeds for oregano, basil, and parsley. I showed the kids what the dried store-bought herbs look and smell like. We determined that oregano smells like pizza, basil smells sweet, and parsley smells like... hay or grass.

click on the pictures to see them larger- there are a lot

We put in the dirt pellets, added water, and waited for the dirt to grow.

Then it was time for the seeds. Nichole first with the parsley seeds. Next, Jr. with the teeniest tiniest oregano seeds. Last, it was Mommy with the not so small basil seeds.

Squirt them again with water and place them on the windowsill next to our avocado pit which by the way never sprouted. Sigh. Oh well, next time we have avocados we'll try again.

It only took a few days before we started to see progress. The first to push up out of the soil- the oregano. From those teeny tiny seeds. Amazing.

It wasn't long before the others started poking up as well.

The parsley grew fast.

Pretty soon we had a whole container full of plants.

I think I got more out of the lesson on faith than the kids. All we have to do is start with the smallest bit of faith, but we try. We nurture it with scripture study, prayer, church attendance, Family Home Evening (just like nurturing the seed with light, water, soil to grow in), and it will grow. The more we work on it, the stronger we get. Even from something as itty bitty teeny tiny as an oregano seed. Seriously, those things are ti-ny.

It's fun to see the progress of these little herbs.

And to see our own progress with our faith.