School's out in two weeks.

Our school gardening season is coming to an end next week. We have been busy the last few weeks harvesting, pruning, deadheading and collecting seeds. For Mother's Day I printed seed packet templates and the children assembled & decorated them. We filled them with marigold seeds that we saved from our flowers, nasturtiums, chives and cosmos. Mrs. McCormick ordered some cute flower pots from Oriental Trading Company that are in two parts - the kids decorated them and we put the seed packet along with a small bag of potting mix inside. I got very favorable reports that they were well received by all Mommies! Last week we had a sampling of green bell pepper, yellow onions, "Gypsy" sweet pepper (an elongated yellow sweet pepper - it's delicious) and nasturtium leaves with a bit of ranch dressing on the side. My daughter who is somewhat of a particular eater decided that she liked ranch dressing and the peppers were "okay".

When we went out Thursday to garden, it appeared that some bugs had decided to pay us a visit - our zucchini and gourd plants were not doing well and we pulled the zucchini out of the container. Next week we will harvest the rest of the onions. I will bring some other ingredients and we are going to have our "Junior Iron Chef" competition. I'll let you know what culinary creations we enjoy!