Disaster, Science, and Picture Books

The beautiful garden we had yesterday is no more. I got up at 5:30 this morning and went out to check for frost, since it was chilly in the house. Sure enough, there was frost, so I quickly grabbed some old sheets and covered the peppers, basil, and eggplant, then woke Mr. Intellectual up to help me get the sprinkler going in the tomato/corn garden. We ran it for about 15 minutes, until it broke, then hooked up another sprinkler. In another 5-10 minutes that came apart, so I started watering with a thumb over the end of the hose. The tomatoes, and the zucchinis at the edge, were still stiff and icy. We kept watering for another 20 minutes or so, till the sun was nearly to hit the garden. It didn’t seem to make much difference, though, as you can see by this picture.

I looked closely at all the plants early this afternoon, and, as I had hoped, found live foliage down near the ground on most of the plants. I’m hoping they will pull through and we’ll still get a crop, although we’ve probably been knocked back at least a month. I decided we’ll turn this into Science. I sent Mr. Sweetie out to get me a couple of step-in fence posts. Mr. Imagination asked what they are for. I told him, “For a scientific investigation. You don’t know those big words, do you?”  He responded that he didn’t. I explained that we’ll do a science experiment. He asked, “With big words I don’t know?”

Our experiment will be to take pictures of one zucchini and one tomato plant, that I think will survive, each Monday for awhile, and see how they recover. The posts are to mark the ones I chose. So, here are the first pictures.

The older boys all had work at the vineyard today, so I only had Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Little Miss here most of the day. We have a lot of picture books from the library, which all need to go back, so we spent an hour and a half or so reading them together. The little boys loved that! Here are all the books we read today. They love this kind of school.