Saturday, June 25, 2011

The Magic of Garden Gnomes

Just as my Grandmother and mother did when we were little, I have made gardening a rewarding and fun activity for the boys and for our family. Sam has his own garden now, which grows his own seeds. Started by him at school, planted by him. Add a few spinning pinwheels we picked up at the zoo recently and it is a regular Secret Garden in our side yard.


Peter helps me tend to my garden, watering, weeding (and not always the weeds! I'd like to tell you my green onions were thriving, but someone mistook them for grass) and harvesting our crops. Peter grasps handfuls of carrot and beets that I pick and 'oohs' and 'oohs' at them, then rushes over to our outdoor sink, pulls up a chair and demands that I turn on the 'wa wa' so that he may rinse the dirt from them before we snap off the greens and take them inside.


We take to the garden almost everyday after naps, donning our gardening Crocs and plastic sand shovels, the boys help me weed the garden, inspect and pick the carrots, the herbs for the evenings meal and lettuce for salads. They then work as a team, Peter to turn off and on and off and on and off and on (you get the idea) the water while Sam expertly holds his thumb in the stream of water creating a spray that delights our crops like a summer's rain.


Both boys have been tasting, if not eating all of the vegetables we pick and sometimes right out of the garden as I so fondly remember doing as a kid. Peter is a little more adventurous and can be spotted with a piece of lettuce dangling from his lips nearly every afternoon. The pride in their eyes (and my own!) having grown these edible items from just tiny seeds is certainly the reward of a lifetime that is positively heartbreaking to let a child miss out on.



1 comment:

Daniela Swider said...

That's just so precious!