Bad news first: I have no brain.

It has been missing since about six months into pregnancy…and it is now becoming painfully apparent that its continued decline is starting to effect our day-to-day well being.

…at least when it comes to gardening.

After our unfortunate leaving-outside-overnight incident last week, I lovingly put the sprouts back on the front porch to soak up some lovely sunshine…and promptly forgot about them until the next morning.

The frost, on the other hand, made a bee line for them.

Enter dead veggies.

I tried to resuscitate them. But, Mother Nature, she’s rather unforgiving.

And I had to explain to the 32-month old how and why mommy had killed her garden.

Bad mommy.

Good news: New sprouts are brewing.

Since I take about a million photos a day, I joined FLICKR a while ago and jumped right in to the community there. I connected fast to a collection of women in Western Canada and around the globe who dig the crafty, vintage and the gardening vibe…and was so grateful to have met Krista at Big & Little.

I very much admire this Nanaimo mama’s sensibility and, after watching her beautiful garden evolve, through the help of her pile of kiddos, I touched base to get some advice on our own.

Krista is, indeed, one of the nicest, most helpful women I could hope to connect with. She is both gracious and generous with her advice and encouragement to try again - employing her brilliant Spring-inspired gardening technique of sprouting seeds in egg shells.

We eat plenty of eggs around here. So, collecting the necessary shells was not a lengthy task. We washed them out and tucked them away, hoping to sprout anew.

Before our planting day, I checked in with Krista for some expert advice: “It’s really simple! All I do is keep the eggshells left from breakfast or baking or whatever. I always just try to not crack them the usual way if I know I want to save them, I crack them gently at the top and poke my thumb threw, leaving only the tip of the eggshell broken open. Rinse them out and store them until you have enough to do your seeds. Then spoon in a light potting mix and poke a seed in each one. Water only lightly as there is no drainage. Once the seedlings have developed a couple of sets of leaves (usually with sunflowers they’re about 4″ tall when they’re ready to go outside) just plant the shell outside where you’re growing it. When you plant it, you’ll just lightly squeeze the shell so it cracks, but not so hard that you disturb the root ball too much. This way the roots can be free! Otherwise they won’t get out, eggshells can take a year to breakdown and the roots can not get through them.”

I felt recharged by her fun idea, and the tiny person totally dug the idea of sprouting eggs.

So, off we went to replant our radishes, zucchini and squash.

They are currently incubating in a dark, warm spot - and we are probably more in line now with a growing time line that will get them outside after the last frost.

Try, try again is definitely the theme song around here these days:).

Best news: The herbs are rockin’!

Since they have a nice, warm kitchen window to linger in, the herbs never bore the wrath of my memory issues. They, therefore, are in excellent shape and got moved into larger digs this week.

We also crafted some new ID tags out of a clothespin thrift score:

So, while I’m off to procure some serious memory enhancers, we had a great lesson this week in proper care, life and death, and not giving up when things look grim.

Our herb success and inspiration from Big & Little have definitely made this gardening mis-step less about failure and more about making the best of it all.

The tiny person is back to checking her seeds every day.

I have learned my lesson in terms of Spring weather and the necessity of leaving reminders in obvious places.

And we’ve got a new, fun idea to try out.

Ah, the trial and error of it all:)