How triumphant we felt when we finished building the teepee and got it to stand firmly on the ground! The teepee is at least 6’ in diameter, so the kids had to work hard and long to dig a bed around it, especially given how hard our soil is.

We had to figure out the proper spacing between the poles and the knotting of the rope on top; we watched some videos to help us.

We also added a trellis between our two retaining walls. We use the area created by the retaining walls as our vegetable beds. They get a LOT of sun! And the poppies grow like crazy!

These poppies were grown from seed right after our retaining wall beds were ready. We love how they add so much cheer to our garden and how long they stay in bloom!

This is our other retaining wall bed. We planted strawberries here when the bed was ready, and they have been spreading aggressively since then!

Setting up our teepee for our daughter’s birthday. This is in early June. We had sown seeds, but had to wait for it to start looking like a ‘bean’ teepee! Our baby cherry tree is on the right in the distant background, and incidentally, we got to harvest our first crop of cherries from this little tree on her birthday! What a gift from Mother Earth! :)