The Garden Challenge – My Scheme starts to grow

On Monday at work in between moaning and groaning about the pain I was feeling from shovelling dirt (beginning to sounds like 3 children asked to put garden beds together!!!) the next part of my scheme began to sprout. I knew I needed help in growing successful gardens or the kids would very soon lose interest and that would defeat the entire purpose of this challenge.

What to grow? How to grow it? How to give the kids enough room to own their garden while giving them all an equal amount of support??? If only I had a way to tap into more experienced gardeners…..

Ahaaa…. an idea began to form…

Later that night, as I arrived at home, I dropped three envelopes on the bench. One for Zac, One for Tara and One for Jess.

I called all three to the bench and watched as they opened their envelopes and began to read…. below is an example of what Zac received (they were all the same, just the names were changed)…

Dear Zac,

Congratulations on the completion of the stage one to earning a green thumb, the team event with your sisters to assemble a vegetable garden. While it was a slow start, you all came together in the end and worked well as a team to achieve and complete the challenge.

Well, that was the easy part and now it is time for stage two. Design and grow a sustainable vegetable garden. In this stage, you will be competing against your sisters to see who can create and nurture the best vegetable garden, and who will have the best crop of farm fresh vegetables.

This may sound like a daunting task, but the good news is you don’t have to do this alone as you are lucky enough to have access to some very wise gardeners who you can recruit onto your team. Your Grandparents, Grandpa Laurie, Granny Vicki and Nana, are all very experienced and would know what to do to help and advise you, but remember this is your challenge!  So…

1. Discuss with your sisters and agree which Grandparent will be on your team.
2. Call your grandparent tonight, explain the challenge and ask them if they would be on your team and help develop your garden.
3. Attached to this letter is $20. This Is not for lollies, chocolate or computer games. This is your budget for buying seeds or plants. If you need more money you will have to figure out how to earn it.
4. Agree a time with your chosen Grandparent and ask them to take you out to buy your plants or seeds and to plant them into your garden.
5. You must take a selfie of you and your grandparent that Dad will put on your vegetable garden to identify your garden.
6. Water and watch your garden grow with pride.

While you can ask Mum or I for help, this is your challenge and it is up to you, and your success will depend on how much effort you are prepared to put into it.

Good Luck and I can’t wait to see what you can achieve,

Dad.

Was fascinating to watch their expressions, beginning with confusion, moving to excitement as they found the $20 and disappointment as they realised what it was for, then excitement again as they reached the end of the letter…. they then all calmly and very maturely discussed who would be on whose team….

….yea right!!! A fight broke out and I had to intervene explaining that a discussion does not mean you keep repeating the same thing over and over, just getting louder if someone says something you don’t agree with!!! Wasn’t even about who, but simply that it wasn’t being discussed and agreed on by everyone!!

Anyway, I helped them come to a mutual agreement and everyone was very happy with their chosen Grandparent. Then the phone calls started…

Tara was first ringing Nana (Maz) who agreed to be on her team, and they set a date for next Monday to go and buy seeds together. Tara was very excited because as she pointed out Nana has some very big vegetable gardens in her backyard, so she must be the most experienced!!

Zac went next, calling Grandpa (Laurie) and again Grandpa agreed to be on Team Zac. Surprising but there is a bit of competition brewing here with Zac very insistent that they just had to win the challenge!! Zac and Grandpa agreed to go shopping on Saturday afternoon.

Two down and one to go, Jess rang Granny (Vicki), but unfortunately Granny wasn’t around! We tried a few times with no luck and Jess was starting to look a little apprehensive… luckily we waited until after dinner and Jess was able to catch Granny on FaceTime. Granny agreed to join Team Jess, and they agreed to head out on Saturday morning, so they could spend the afternoon planting. Jess’s face was absolutely beaming when she got off the call.

3 for 3, my scheme was really starting to grow 🙂