Garden Dress

My good friend Tara made this adorable dress for Juliet.  Today I took pictures of her in it as she walked around our driveway, our neighbor's driveway, and then took her in the backyard so I could photograph her next to our garden, which we planted the first week of March.

Juliet is quite good at walking now, so my inept fashion photography was even more challenged because the model would not stand still. Thank you for the dress, Tara.  It makes my heart happy.  How can you not love the back of her fat little knees?  And she also had matted peanut butter in the back of her hair.  No one would know if I didn't say it, but it just endears me to her even more.  She smelled like peanut butter all day.  It's a toddler thing.

Here we are by the garden.  It has really gotten big and the beans and tomatoes have taken over everything.  We really had no idea what we were doing.  This is our first attempt at planting anything for school that didn't just sit in our windowsill until I threw it away.

Have you ever seen some incredible person who had done some incredible feat say, "If I can do it, anyone can do it!"  I never believe these people.  It's things like, "If I can run a marathon, anyone can run a marathon." or "If I can become a concert pianist, anyone can become a concert pianist." You get the idea. And you're saying to yourself, right buddy, I could never do that.  But let me say it, and this is true.  If the Alley's can plant a garden, ANYONE can plant a garden.

I seriously thought that we would stare at black dirt for the entire summer and wonder what we did wrong.  I had no faith that it would produce anything.  I really only did it because my five year old asked me every single day, multiple times a day, for about two months, when we were going to plant our garden.  (Yesterday I told him I'm glad he bothered me about it.  You won't hear me say that very often.  That I'm glad someone bothered me.)

Tonight we ate our first batch of beans and they were good.  Your kids don't give you a hard time about eating their vegetables when you can use lines like, "You planted these seeds with your bare hands.  You watered them.  We are not going to waste them!"  They all ate them up.  Juliet especially.

Ju-Ju in her garden dress.  So sweet I could pick her up and eat her!  Wait, am I talking about the beans or the baby?  It's all blurring together this late at night...