Last Thursday, we went to the Flower Fields with a whole bunch of friends.

Originally it was just going to be me and Annalie, Brenda and Bug.

Photo by Brenda Ponnay

Then we thought, maybe my mom would like to go, so we waited a couple of days till she was in town.

Photo by Brenda Ponnay

While I was chatting with Jen about something or other, I invited her and her girls to come along.

Brenda was talking with her mom on the phone and mentioned our plans, and Sue thought that sounded like fun, so she and Heather came and brought Sue’s mom, Brenda’s grandma, along too.

Photo by my mom

So what was supposed to be a nice little meet-up for me and Brenda ended up being a whole noisy bunch of us, from little Molly climbing in and out of her stroller, to Annalie and Bug and Audrey alternating between running ahead of us and begging to be carried, to Brenda’s grandma walking along at her own pace with her walker. It wasn’t exactly what we planned, but it was fun!

And it really is beautiful there. The huge fields of ranunculus in stripes of color are stunning. The sweet pea maze was fun, even though it was the last thing we did and by that time the kids and adults were hungry and a little crabby.

Photo by Brenda Ponnay

Photo by Brenda Ponnay

Photo by my mom

p.s. I edited all these photos with Photoshop on my Mac, for those of you who are interested in that kind of thing. I’m finding the transition much easier than I expected, partly thanks to Brenda’s help and partly thanks to the fact that Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is quite similar to Photoshop.

It wasn’t until late this evening that I remembered I was supposed to pick two winners from the commenters on the previous post for the vanilla giveaway. Oops! Well, technically, it’s still May 1st. So I fired up the ol’ Random Integer Generator and asked for two integers between 1 and 58….

Ha! You didn’t think it was going to be that quick, did you? Before I tell you who won, I’ll tell you that we went to the Flower Fields yesterday with a whole bunch of friends. It was my first visit there and it was super fun for the kids and the adults. I would be writing about that and showing you all the photos, but I’m in the middle of learning how to use Photoshop on my new Mac, and it’s rather slow going. I am confident it’ll eventually be a piece of cake, much easier and better than editing in Paint Shop Pro as I’ve done for all these years. But I’d outgrown that program, and it’s not available on a Mac anyway. Which is probably half the reason I wanted a Mac, honestly, so I’d be forced to learn Photoshop. Kinda like how I wanted us to buy a stick-shift car so I would be forced to learn to drive one, which worked a treat. So I’m hopeful this will work the same way.

I’ll stop talking about computers and programs now before you nod off at your desk. Moving on to the vanilla winners!

Random.org tells me that the third and thirty-third commenters are the lucky winners. Amanda and Bekah, that means you! Congratulations, you two. I’ll get your prizes in the mail soon.

Thank you to everyone who commented! You all convinced me I should just reuse the old pots, lighten up about cleaning them, and let Annalie spray them out with the hose and maybe paint them if I’m feeling ambitious. You are a hard-working, environmentally-conscious, pro-child-labor, creative, persuasive bunch!

I’ve done a lot of container gardening over the years, mainly herbs. I have planted herbs directly in the ground a couple of times and that worked fine but I keep coming back to container gardening. I guess we are usually renting and are not at liberty to dig up part of the yard for a vegetable patch. But also, I just like it. Container gardening just seems more user-friendly, less intimidating.

I’ve been meaning to start an herb garden since the day we moved here. That was ten months ago. I’m not sure what took me so freaking long, unless it’s all that traveling we seem to keep doing. But that’s just an excuse. We have to have someone watch the cats for us when we travel anyway, while they’re here they can water the plants too.

So the other day when we went to the base exchange (which is like a big department store, or on larger bases like ours, several stores) to look at Macs, we stopped in the garden center on a whim and picked up herbs, some tomatoes, a cucumber plant, and a big ol’ bag of potting soil.

I’ve never had great luck with growing tomatoes, in pots or in the ground, but I keep trying because the only kind of tomatoes I truly love are garden-fresh ones. I still won’t eat them raw except in salsa fresca but oh what wonderful salsa fresca they make! The cucumber I bought because Annalie and I both love them. I remember when I was a kid and my dad went through his gardening years, we always seemed to have a brown paper bag full of freshly-picked cucumbers still warm from the sun sitting on the counter. They were smallish and sweet, with so few seeds I didn’t even have to cut them out like I usually do with larger store-bought cukes. Man, I could eat a dozen of those garden-fresh cucumbers in one sitting.

What I really love most, though, are the herbs. I love cooking with fresh herbs. I love being able to step outside, snip a few sprigs of thyme, then come back inside and make the most kickass salad dressing. I love being able to make a batch of fresh pesto to eat over pasta or add to soups or use as a sandwich spread. I love sending Annalie out with the scissors to get some rosemary that I can mince and add to the home-fried potatoes.

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to doing this. Now the only question is, should I be thrifty and scrub out a few of the old dirt-crusted terracotta pots we already own, or should I be lazy and go buy more cheap terracotta pots? Cast your vote in the comments. On May 1st I’ll randomly pick a commenter to win a bottle of homemade vanilla!

Edited to add: There have been 50 comments so far, way more than I was expecting! You guys have all given me some great advice—it never occurred to me to put Annalie to work, duh—so I will draw TWO names on Friday and give away TWO bottles of vanilla. Heck, if enough people comment, maybe I’ll give away three!