How does your garden grow?

We have signs of life! Look closely. Four for four! In each cup, seeds are sprouting from the soil. And that's after just 72 hours.

Of intense prayer.

Sydney and I went shopping last Monday, visiting the not so new anymore Bed, Bath and Beyond store in Duluth. On a related note, I learned Monday that B, B and B does not enforce a "you break it, you buy it" policy, thank goodness! Sydney got a little excited when she saw a toothbrush holder made to look like flip flop sandals sticking out of a sandy beach.

We did buy a non-broken version of the tooth brush holder. But even more exciting than that, we bought... drum roll please... a mini greenhouse. Very, very mini. But it comes with everything you could need to grow four kinds of flowers, except a garden to transplant them to later. And in our case, a fence to surround said garden to protect the flowers from rabbits and deer.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we need to get these seeds to grow.

I set up the greenhouse (the hardest part of the process) and let Sydney cut open the "Gro-Mix" packets.

She then dumped each one into the "Gro-Pod Containers." (Some lawyer for Miracle-Gro has been busy. All of the "Gro" labels have been trademarked.)

Next, we add Gro-Water. Not really. Regular tap water seems to do the trick. A little too well. Time for mommy to run for towels. I should have noticed the drainage holes in the bottom of the Gro-Pod Containers.

Stir it up. The addition of water makes the Gro-Mix triple in size.

At last we added the seeds and tiny stakes to remind us what we should be seeing. (Hopefully, sunflowers, marigolds and red and coral zinnias.)

Within a matter of minutes, Sydney was asking when her flowers were going to start growing. She was pretty disappointed that it wouldn't happen before bedtime.

The last few days have been sunny, so we've been setting the greenhouse on our patio table during the day, and then bringing it inside when the temperatures drop at night. So far so good. In fact, we might have to go back and pick up the other version of the kit - vegetables. AJ doesn't understand the purpose of growing something you can't eat. And we'd talked last fall about planting a vegetable garden this year. This just might be how we get it started.