Valentine's day is a time to show appreciation for those you love. I love all my friends, and of course I love gardening. I've decided that I'm going to combine my two loves and give away seeds this February 14th! Of course, I won't just hand people a pile of seeds. Instead, I'm going to make everyone a special card to put the seeds in. Because the only thing better than getting a packet of seeds, is getting a packet of seeds and a really nice handmade card!

Editor's Note: This is part 1 of a great 2 part comic Thomas H. had sent us way back when we were doing the last couple print editions, but we were never able to run it in the print MCFC gallery. By the time we started getting fan art up on the web the second piece had disappeared. We've looked high an low for it but can't find it anywhere. This really upsets us because it was so good, and we are usually extremely careful with fan art. We're really sorry Thomas! As soon as the other part shows up we'll put them both togehter in our fan comic section as well.

DAY 5

The whole gang and I went to our local nursery and picked out plants for the new garden. We bought a lot of herbs, some flowers, a strawberry plant and even a peanut plant! (F.W. wanted that one. I’m not sure if it will be warm enough to grow peanuts, but we’ll see.) We had those plus the plants saved from the old garden to plant. With everyone pitching in we planted them in no time!

DAY 4

Before I add the soil to the garden, I want to create paths that help shape my actual planting areas. I’m going to make “wedges” in this garden, and each wedge will have a different theme. I’m going to separate each wedge by putting wood chips down. These wood chips will separate my garden beds and act as paths. Also they help cover the newspaper so I can put soil down only where I'll be planting (great compost is like a treasure and I don't want to waste any).

DAY 3

I went to my local newspaper office and asked if they have any old newspapers they would be willing to give me. Boy did they! No, I don’t want to read the same articles over and over again, I need them for the garden. And, no Ramses, I'm not planting newspaper trees. You see, to prevent the weeds from coming up again, I’m covering the entire garden bed with the papers! I'm breaking each newspaper up into its sections (arts, sports, etc.) and laying those down with the edges overlapping. Moo-Cow helped me but I kept catching him reading the paper instead of laying them out.

Day 2 

In addition to pulling weeds and raking I also moved the ring of rocks that surrounded the original garden. They had been there so long many were buried and some even had these cool looking ant colonies under them!

Remember my shade garden that I planted last fall? Well, this is what it looks like this spring!

I just raked it out, added some wood chips to prevent weeds from coming up, and watered it a few times. Aside from that I haven’t done any other maintenance and it is already starting to look so beautiful! Spring sure makes me happy!

It’s a good thing my shade garden doesn’t require a lot of work because I have a new project over at the Moo-Cow Fan Club Headquarters that is going to take up all my extra time this week.

We're back from China, but it was such a great trip I can't stop thinking about it! One of the things that I really liked there were Chinese seals, also known as chops. Chops are blocks that have a name or symbol carved into them and can be used to stamp documents. Chops have been used in China for thousands of years as official signatures. Originally, chops were used just by the Emperor to sign official documents, but over time other officials started using it, and now anyone can have their own chop!

Have you heard the legend of how tea drinking was discovered? Supposedly a few leaves from a tea plant fell into a Chinese emperor's pot of boiling water, and he decided to give it a taste. Who knows if that is actually true, but it shows that there is a long history of drinking tea in China and when we visited I couldn’t wait to learn more about it. Oh, and in Chinese the word for tea is “cha.”

What I really wanted to do when we were in China was attend a tea ceremony. You can drink tea just about anywhere, but I wanted to learn about each tea and really appreciate it. Luckily, in Shanghai we found a great one that was well worth it!

Ni Hao class (do you remember what that means?). Kiweenie Lao Shi here again with part two of my lesson about the Chinese language. We learned how to say a few helpful phrases in our last class and I hope you've been practicing them. We've been using them a lot here in China! As you've been touring Beijing with us you've probably noticed that the spoken language is not the only part of Chinese that is very different from English.

Eating in China is soooooo much fun! You just walk around the street and there are people with little carts set up, or in tiny storefront shops, selling delicious dumplings, soups, buns, and my new favorite—spring onion pancakes! The only way these are anything like a pancake is they're flat. Other than that they are more like a yummy, savory, fried dough (I definitely wouldn't recommend them for breakfast). In China, they only cost us about ten cents each, and I got one fresh from the cooker. It was so hot it burned my hands, but it was worth it!

I really wanted to learn how to make these so I got Moo-Cow's expert cooking help. It turns out that they are simple to make with just a few basic ingredients! Here's our recipe. I hope you find them as delicious as we do!