Chilliwack School Garden Program

Chilliwack has a really cool garden program that has been offered for a long, long time.  The idea is to get school aged children interested in gardening.  There is a $2.00 entrance fee and then you are supplied with all the information you need to start your garden.  They also provide you will all the seeds you will need.  What a great way to see how the things we buy can also be grown at home.  First Abby helped Trevor move compost soil over to the garden.  It's a messy job digging out the compost, but it's great for giving your garden a head start!

 Abby preparing the soil for planting.  This is hard work but makes it much easier to plant later.

 The garden program specifies the size of the garden, and where to plant each variety.  They have judges come and look at your garden at least two times during the months of June and July.  They check to make sure all the varieties are represented, that you are keeping away pests, hiling/thinning your plants as needed.

 After planting all the seeds you need to give them a good watering to start them growing.  Abby's garden will have Pole Beans, Beets, Carrots and Zinnias.  In the middle of August you can take your harvest to the Chilliwack Exhibition and try to win some prizes.  Last year Abby won $5.00 and a bunch of ribbons for her entries.  Hopefully she can enter a few items again this coming year.

 Kendra isn't able to participate until next year.  She enjoys watching Abby do all the work though!

Tulip Festival and Whidby Island

For Trevor's Birthday we decided to have a small family getaway.  The weather turned out to be very nice and sunny, but was still quite cool.  If you dressed for the weather though it was very nice.  I even got a bit of a tan after spending two days in the outdoors!  

 These are the tulips outside the entrance to one of the gardens.  They had a stake with the name of each variety which was a lot of fun for Abby to identify the tulips by their names.  She was extra excited when we found a tulip called Abby!

 Tulips are associated with Holland, and this trip definately reminds us of our trips there.  Windmills and all!

 Kendra posing for the camera.

 Abby brought her little camera along too...turned out to be a lot of fun for her taking different pictures and angles with her camera!

                                                                             Cute!

 Some art we found in LaConner.  Made for great climbing!  You wouldn't know there was a great big playground about 50 ft away with a lot more fun stuff to play on...

 In Oak Harbour looking for shells, crabs, bugs, worms at the ocean.  Abby thought this was REALLY cool.  Kendra, not so much!

 Time for a picnic at Deception Pass.  It was quite chilly sitting here in the wind, but the lunch was very yummy, so no one minded too much!  After this we went on a very nice circle tour walk of the area.  They have signs posted everywhere and in that one walk we passed through a lot of different ecosystems.  Beach, Grass Lands, RainForest, Swamp.  It reminds us of how magnificent God's creation is!

A very nice teenage boy offered to take a family picture next to this very old tree.  It's the oldest tree in the park and they had posted signs asking for people to treat the tree with care.  After our walk we headed to the beach once more and walked along the shore.

As we headed back home we stopped and walked over the Deception Pass bridge and watched the water rush below.  You can see the beach on the left side of the photo.  Beautiful place to visit and I hope we will go back again sometime to explore Whidbey Island a bit more!