Wednesday is for gardening like Grandma!

When I was a little girl, I stayed with my grandparents while my parents worked. One of my favorite things to do with my Grandma was help in her garden. I'm sure that as a three year old I was very, very helpful, too! I vividly remember helping her pick string beans then snapping them and watching her preserve them. I remember what seemed like hours spent sitting at her table, snapping the beans in huge metal mixing bowls. I loved talking with Grandma, and hearing all the town gossip from her point of view. Then while the beans were processing, we'd escape her humid and HOT kitchen to eat Popsicles in the shade.
Today, I'm going to recreate a little slice of Grandma with M and A - E, too, if we're slow and she gets home from school before we're finished. My string beans are really ready to be picked, so we're going to gather them all in, and I'll teach M to snap off the ends just the way I used to for Grandma. I don't think my family would eat bottled beans, we prefer the frozen variety, and I've been told you don't even have to blanch beans. We're just going to bag them up, label them, and put them in the freezer. That will eliminate the steamy, hot kitchen, but we're still going to enjoy Popsicles in the shade.

Also, I'm sharing some pictures from yesterday's painting fun. A just isn't interested in painting and such the way the girls were at his age - he'd much rather drive his trucks. He did give it a shot though, and was disgusted when the paint got on him. He liked the trucks E painted for him, and the multi-colored handprints M made. We all had lots of fun and used lots of paint! Good times.