Yesterday, besides the usual weekend chores of laundry, grocery shopping, errands, and house clean up, we also built a water rocket launcher! Mike helped me to follow a plan on the NASA Science Olympiads website for making one. My class is going to love getting to do this experiment...learning about the laws of motion and then making and launching their own rockets on the last day of school!

Today, we spent the day working on the new garden. Our neighbor allowed us to come over and shovel trailer loads of her horse manure, which we then tilled into each of the garden boxes. Then, we did a lot (A LOT!) of raking to even out the beds and the walkways and make some rows/hills in some of the beds. We dug the extra dirt out of the walkways, and then put down weed barrier fabric in the walkways. Next weekend, we'll have to put pea gravel down over the fabric to complete the walkways. Then, I started planting some seeds for plants that are more frost resistant and/or like the cooler weather.  Still have lots of planting to do once the frost date passes, of course. I'm pretty sure I'm planting enough for the entire neighborhood, but I can't resist the space! Mike helped all day, too, of course. He's grumbling about how much I'm planting, and how much his back aches, but he likes it too! Probably we will both have sore muscles tomorrow!

Jackson enjoyed playing in the dirt while we worked. I set him on a blanket outside the garden, but it didn't take him long to crawl into the boxes to investigate the dirt and a shovel. I took terrible pictures...right into the sun so very washed out, but hopefully they will give you a sense of the garden and my helper.

Full view of garden from fence:

  Right side of garden:

Left side of garden:

 View from back lawn:

Back of garden toward the house:

 Jack "helping":

 Love the clematis that's in full bloom!

Only 7 more days of school with kids. We have this week and then Monday and Tuesday next week and then the kids are done. I will have to finish out that week working on report cards and cleanup, but summer break is coming close. I can't wait!