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Little Ciscoe


Ciscoe Morris, for those of you who are not familiar with gardening in Washington State, is a knowledgeable and slightly eccentric gardening expert in the area. He appears on the local news and has his own radio show where he shares tips and answers the questions of people who call in about their gardening dilemmas. He is truly enthusiastic about gardening and, honestly, a little crazy. I used to love to watch or listen to his show when we lived in Washington, and I miss his tips now that I actually have a garden.

Having a garden this year has been lots of fun for all of us but especially for our Little Ciscoe, Andrew. One day last week, I went out to check the garden and brought in this load of tomatoes:
Andrew couldn't get over it. "Look at those potatoes!! There are lots and lots!" His enthusiasm was so cute. He'll often tell me, "Mom, I gonna go check the garden, OK?" Then, he'll scoot on out there and bring in a handful of green "potatoes" for me to use. He loves to help with dinner if we are including items from the garden.


He gets really excited about all of the vegetables and fruit we have grown, but he hasn't actually eaten much of it.


Today, I got the itch to rid our front yard of some unsightly Bermuda grass. Little Ciscoe was so excited about helping that his enthusiasm encouraged the other children to help as well. He learned quickly which bits of grass were weeds and where the good stuff was. He also learned right off the bat that it is important to pull up the whole plant. He would often exclaim, "I got the root!!! I got the root! That weed is gone!" Then, he'd throw it in the bucket.



After the older kids were tired of weeding, he stuck with me the longest. He made sure to be right there when I pulled up a weed so that he could throw it in the bucket for me.

The other project I worked on today was the garden. Rick accidentally murdered our overabundant zucchini plants by trimming them back a couple of weeks ago. So, I had a lot of really big dead plants in the garden that needed cleaning up.

Little Ciscoe was right by my side through the whole project--even when I went over to expand our strawberry plot to make room for the strawberries to spread.

The only disadvantage to Andrew's "help" in the garden is that he is so excited about finding things growing that he picks them before they are ripe. While I was working, he made quite a pile for himself on the stairs:

He made sure to get samples of everything--corn, cantaloupe, beans, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots--all not quite ripe, of course. He was so proud of himself, though, that he insisted we get a bowl from the house and bring it all in. See his Ciscoe smile? I wouldn't be surprised if he grows up to be Iowa's gardening expert, but by then he will be able to control his excitement enough to actually let the produce ripen before picking it.

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