Of Gardens and Gardeners

Myles cutting the last part with a machete!

One of our ongoing jobs with the orphanages here is lawn maintenance. We really dropped the ball with House 2 and it became a jungle. When the rains come the lawn grows like crazy and it is VERY big. The boys cut everything with a weed eater and it takes at least ten hours to cut the whole thing. Myles finally got the whole thing cut and Clancy helped to rake and pick up the piles of grass. It is time to start all over again already. 

Almost totally done...

Clancy on grass pick up duty!

Gettin' her done!

 I have failed to give an update on the jumbo garden we planted last spring. We weren't too proud of it because it mostly was amazing at growing WEEDS...EEK! However, we did get a good crop of onions, cabbages, zucchini, and some corn, as well as pumpkins and squash.

A load of Cabbages...

Myles holding one of our prize cabbages...

 The Tias much to our chagrin harvested all the pumpkins that they could find about two months ago... they were all green and not ripe. Our kids were a little put out about it. So you can imagine our joy when we found amongst the weeds several pumpkins that had not only been overlooked, but were orange as well! We discovered that communal gardening takes flexibility and patience...

Our Beautiful Pumpkins

We also got a bunch of butternut squash. My personal favorite!

Clancy and Myles "Holding the Loot"!

The guys have done a much better job of keeping House 1's yard looking sharp. It is a lot smaller and more manageable for starters. They go from two to three times a month to cut the lawn. One day Rudi and I went to cut the lawn and when we got there realized that we had left the weed eater at home....Hmm plan B. went into effect...next week!

Myles cutting the grass at CDA Baby House!

 This last week we dropped off Clancy with Myles to wash all the downstairs windows. Tia Sylvia was sure that Clancy was in trouble and his punishment was to wash the windows... It took a little convincing to get her to realize that he WANTED to wash them! Clancy had them shining bright when we got back from running errands.

Clancy sitting down after all his hard work on the windows!

Ruth watering our small garden in the backyard!

And last but not least, we have all enjoyed eating the veggies out of our mini garden in our backyard. We ate our own lettuce for about three months and are now starting all over again with new plants. We also have a nice amount of parsley, spinach, and some other various herbs! We have bloomed where we are planted here in Bolivia!