Today we had a going away party at our house for our priest who was on essentially a 3yr residency with our church. So most of the parish was here for this bittersweet goodbye. So now to get to the gardening bit. We started our community garden in January of 2010 and we ordered strawberry plants for the community bed and I got 24 starts for my home. Once I got them I didn’t know what to do with them as I have the heaviest clay soil you ever saw outside a pottery shop. But we’d already filled the bed at the garden and a friend from church said she’d had great luck on her hillside and I’m on a hill so I put them in my flower bed on the hill next to the house. Well they really like it there and are coming on strong. They seem the best they’ve ever been this year. So, the party is going on and one little girl who’s 5 comes up to me and says smugly that she’d found my strawberries and that they were very good. She wondered though why I had planted them so far down the hill. However it didn’t stop her from making many more trips down there to get more. Then as they were leaving we were standing by the garage and she comes to me and says you have a rosemary bush as she is squeezing a few leaves between her fingers. Yes I say and you are the only 5 yr old I’ve ever known who knows what a rosemary bush is. ps her Daddy is a gardener too.

I also have to tell you that we’ve let the strawberry patch at the garden go this year because it’s infested with Bermuda grass and we just can’t save it. BUT the kids are delighted to find that they can still find some yummy berries in the tall grasses. It’s so fun to see their delight!!! Have a good Holiday Everyone. Sue @ LMU