egg shell gardening

It's funny how one can plan out an activity in their heads. Go through all the motions and in the end go... why did I bother? Luckily most days aren't like that but today was one of those days.

I am NOT a gardener. I love flowers, I love plants, but I do not have a green thumb. Every year I buy a few plants to expand to my attempts of gardening, and they usually do OK. I love cut flowers so I usually choose plants like Shasta Daisies, Echinatia, Day Lilies, Lupins, Bleeding hearts and other flowers that are good to be cut for bouquets. I love the look of daffodils, tulips, crocus's in everyone's yards but I have never ever planted bulbs. I also love houseplants. But all I can barely keep alive is a Christmas Cactus and an Aloe plant which both sit beside our sink. (Even there they don't get watered enough!)

In the grocery line up the other day I saw a cover of a magazine and I can not remember which one it was but it had little African Violets planted in egg shells. I thought they were so adorable! So I came up with this great idea of how I was going to plant some seedlings in eggs shells.

We got up this morning and went to Art Knapps, a local garden centre. This garden centre has some ducks, peacocks, turkeys, pheasants and other birds for sale, koi tanks, a Thomas Train ride, electic trains on an outdoor track and many many plants!

Both girls love Thomas so the train ride was a big hit!

I want to make one of these this summer so we choose 4 varieties of sunflower seeds to plant. I being the impatient person that I am needed instant gradification too, so we bought some daffodils, crocus's and grape hyathinths.

We planted some of the daffodils, crocus's and grape hyathints in the clear glasses. The poor bulbs were squeezed in, pulled a part and put through quite a tramatic ordeal. Hopefully they'll survive.

Well... I wanted to put the daffodils, crocus's and grape hyathints in some egg shells too (tutorial here)... now here's where my trobles began. They are all bulbs, and way bigger bulbs then I imagined, and they didn't fit in the eggs so well. I managed to squeeze in a couple grape hyathints but who knows how long they'll survive!

Both girls did have fun playing in the soil. Aayla especially is not one to pass up a messy adventure. Sierra found a big worm. At first she was scared of it, but when I picked it up and showed her it wouldn't hurt her, she was happy to have a new friend and gave up on the plants. She sat and watched her new worm friend, moved him around from one dirt pile to the next within the yard, until it was time to tidy up.
We also bought some plain wooden trains and brought them home to decorate. We just coloured them with markers as it was way harder then I imagined to garden with a 2 3/4 year old and a 1 1/2 year old. I was short on temper, tired and ready to pack it all in.

In the end we managed to get our plants planted, our seeds sown, and now we have to wait 15-20 days for the seeds to sprout. Thank goodness we bought some instant gratification, that's a long time to wait. We all survived, and hopefully the plants will too. I just wish the activity lived up the the expectations I had built in my head. There's always next time.....