Spring!

Little snowdrop crocus things (Not botanical, I am!) are sprouting in my neighbour's garden!  I noticed them for the first time yesterday.  Spring is here!

Our garden migrates outside

After nearly two months of trying to sprout seeds and care for them in my kitchen window, today Samuel and I 'dug' our garden, planted what had survived the kitchen nursery, and sowed what hadn't.  We spent a happy hour digging in the dirt, watering the ground, and generally just enjoying this time of year.

My goal in planting a garden this year is three-fold:

1)  I want to teach Samuel through doing.

We believe that 'teaching by example' is really the only way that lessons stick with children.  If Samuel sees Mommy and Daddy working the soil, planting, caring for, and harvesting the produce, then he learns by example where food comes from, how a garden is managed, and the benefits and joys of working with your hands to make something beautiful.

2)  I want to have beautiful and productive fun with my son.

I mentioned in this post how I believe that activities for children should be judged on whether they teach a valuable skill and/or help to spread joy and beauty, or if they simply cater to a whim.  Planting a garden is a valuable life skill.  You learn how to use tools, how to grow food and how to recognize creatures in the soil.  "Look, Samuel, a worm.  Do you see the worm?  Worms eat dirt!  Show Mama some dirt.  That's right!  Dirt!"  With a garden you also have the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of creation and develop an interest that goes beyond childhood.  Perhaps skills in gardening will never serve Samuel in his profession, but he may find great peace as an older man in being able to tend roses in his yard, or remember digging with his mother as she showed him how to gently scatter the lettuce seeds.

3)  I want to reinforce the cycle of God's year.

It is so easy these days to forget that we have seasons.  I can swim in July and I can swim in January.  I can eat strawberries in June and I can eat strawberries in November.  The date bends to our wills.  In God's time, this isn't the case.  To every thing there is a season, and that is, I believe, such an important lesson to teach a child.  Children who don't learn that grow up to be adults who mourn their youth, always remembering what it used to be like, trying to act younger than their years and wearing clothing that makes them look like teenagers.  This same mentality makes children want to grow up too fast, unhappy with their childhoods and imagining that a future adulthood must be so much better and more exciting.  The grass is never really greener on the other side.  I think that one of the best and easiest ways to reinforce the idea of seasons is just to celebrate them!  In the Spring we welcome Easter, and then perhaps we have special days for cleaning, and we plant our gardens and then comes Summer and we go swimming and go to family camp and so forth.  Crafts that only come out once a year, special recipes that only show up at Christmas, things that make the yearly cycle a reality.

I hope that your families are finding beautiful ways to rejoice in the goodness of THIS season!

If you like gardening...

then you MUST watch every YouTube video on the 80's show The Victorian Kitchen Garden. I have such fond memories of watching this with my mother. Go ahead, it's worth the time.

May 3rd

On the way into work on Tuesday I saw this one, perfect red tulip.

And what you do when you see a single, perfect red tulip is a) park your bike haphazardly in the parking lot b) lie down on the grass and ruin your work clothes while you c) apparently look injured (or ill) spread eagled on the lawn trying to get the 'right' angle.

On the other hand sometimes you get a little bee thrown into the mix.

And that makes the funny looks all worth while!

Gardening


I have always wanted to plant a garden.  I remember my parents loved gardening and turned our backyard into a beautiful and very productive vegetable garden every year using the square foot gardening technique, companion planting and heritage seeds.

Me?  Well, my cats ate all of my houseplants so growing things inside was never an option, and despite deciding to try every year to plant something in the little bits of ground in the city I could use, I just never did.  Our first apartment had, at the end of a long, dark hall, a little deck.  The deck was dilapidated, but it had some planters filled with dead plants on it into which I always intended to sprinkled morning glory seeds one year.  We moved before I did, though, into apartment #2, which had absolutely no outdoor space and no access to the roof.  Which is why I was thrilled when we moved into apartment #3 that had a shared yard!  I grew some plants, but no vegetables, and then the moment passed because my husband informed me that he was going to be a minister when he grew up and we moved to apartment #4, which is where we are now.  Our apartment does not come with outdoor space.  Two Summers have passed here, each one full of good intentions that THIS would be the year I would plant a vegetable garden just like the one I remember as a child.  And then this Spring I finally said "you know what?  We may never have a yard, and I'm not waiting anymore."  And that's how you get this...

A dryer top covered in egg cartons and cookie trays filled with seeds.  Look very closely because right here...

Is a lettuce sprout!  I called everyone in to see my sprout, of which I was very proud.  Actually, I go to check my sprout almost hourly, it's gotten a little embarassing.  I have been very firm with everyone (four legged inhabitants most emphatically included) that they are not to touch Mama's garden on pain of death!  There will be enough time when everything is planted outside to tear up dirt and rip leaves off of things.  Right now, let me savour the moment...

My very first garden!