I've been wanting a vegetable garden for some time.  My mom usually had one (and I did not really appreciate them as a kid), but I figured Magda would enjoy having one.  And now that we've installed a dog run fence in our yard (which we do not use as a dog run), we have a section that can be kept safe from the dogs.

Meredith O's backyard adventures have been a pretty big inspiration, although I couldn't (and wouldn't) spend that amount of time and effort on anything.  Beside, I had been running a nature preserve in a back yard for years (I call it "not mowing and watering"). Anyway, the O's recently installed a couple of vegetable beds following the Square Foot Gardening principles and that looked like something we might manage to do, too.

So now we've started with a 2x6 raised bed and a couple of pots, and planted a variety of vegetable and flower seeds, a rosemary bush, and some seedlings we've gotten from Meredith.  So far the seedlings are going gangbusters and I think our cucumbers are starting to sprout, too.

We'll see how good we'll be about keeping up with the watering and keeping pests at bay.

Magda has now finished her second week of kindergarten and we have all enjoyed her experience so far.  While we had been very happy with our choice of school, we didn't know how she'd take to and whether there would be a recurrence of her separation issues from last spring. It turns out, we needn't have worried.

We helped her prepare by reading books about school and kindergarten and she got to work on her independence during our summer trip to the CR.  The weekend before school, there was a nice potluck picnic pool party with the entire school and Magda got to meet her teachers and a lot of the students.  And cousin K. was definitely showing enthusiasm about school, and if K. wants something, then Magda must want the same thing, mustn't she?

I decided not to tag along on the first school day in order to not make a big deal out of it.  According to Jfer, Magda was in tears when they were parting, but being on the teacher's lap and having her fairy doll (which I had finished the night before) made it easier.  When she came home, she talked about a couple of friends she had made.

The next day there were also some tears at parting, but apparently less intense and by Thursday, Magda's eyes were dry when school started.  When I talked with her late last week, she said she was said that next day wasn't a school day!  She doesn't talk too much about what they learn, though her favorite thing, so far, has been learning about platelets.

So school has been cool.  This week, I'll get to drop her off on Wednesday and Jfer will start volunteering as a lunch monitor once a week.