I am a gardening loner.
Just me hanging with my plants is all I need. My happy place.
I can get lost for hours if left to my own devices, and it never gets dull or tiring. It is like a form of meditation where nothing else exists.
If it were possible, I would perform yoga in the garden among the plants, but then I would truly qualify as “creepy guy” (although it would be funny as hell to watch).
Lately, though, I have paid closer attention to the need to get kids involved with gardening and the great outdoors knowing it will have a profound influence on them. In the past, my first reaction was to nod my head in approval only to quietly say to myself “No thanks, they’ll just complain and eventually make their way to the swings.” or “I know they’ll run for the hills at the first sign of any insect”. I resisted allowing them into my domain where they could only screw it all up.
Well, I have accepted that I can have it both ways – ONG time and ONG time with the little ones. The kids may only hang for a short period of time, and it may seem like they were unaffected by our interactions, but I have recently witnessed two events that refute that notion.
First, a few photos with me and the kids and our recent project:
We planted a bunch of annual seeds in containers (mostly Zinnias) and planted a few tomato, basil and pepper plants in containers as well. They dug the dirt, planted the seeds and watered – not always in that order however.
The kids lasted about twenty minutes, with my daughter a bit more interested and involved. She especially took to planting the actual seeds. They did make their way to the playground eventually, but I felt like I made the effort to really make them a part of the process. Kudos to me.
Now on to the two recent events I mentioned earlier:
Story #1 – Early last evening, I was out on the back deck moving containers around like a frickin mad scientist trying to find that “right look”. I felt like I was on the “Price is Right” where I would complete an arrangement, pull a lever and then see if I won (the show is so in my blood from days off from school when I was younger – and I still take issue with the Showcase Showdown rules … but that is for another day … I digress). As I was moving a container with newly sprouted Zinnia leaves I completely dropped it and everything fell out of the pot. Like a mature adult, I kicked the pot and cursed like a mutha f’er. What I didn’t realize, was that my daughter was watching out the back door and she ran away crying. I assumed she didn’t like seeing her Dad act like such a baffoon, so I ran in to apologize and calm her down. Well, the adult meltdown apparently meant nothing to her as she told my wife through her tears that “Daddy ruined the seeds.” Wow, we are making some big time progress here!
Story #2 – While waiting for the school bus this morning, my son spotted a weed that had sprouted a daisy like bloom. He immediately yanked it and asked me to put it in water for Mom. Now he has done this before so it wasn’t a complete shock. What was shocking and I swear on … something … he actually told me to remove the leaves from the bottom of the flower before putting it in water. Are you kidding me? Next he’ll tell me how to cut a rose stem on an angle so it will then grow outward.
My wife loves to get the kids involved when she bakes and she has experienced the same thing I discussed above. It may seem like a futile task and it may seem like they could care less but dammit if they don’t surprise you with what they have retained.
Note to self – keep educating and opening their eyes to new things.
love this- I have recently roped my son into helping me in the garden and EVERY day he says “I think my strawberries are bigger than yours”… It’s all about competition!
It’s a hard balance of giving up control in the garden, and letting them explore and learn. Your kids look like they are on the right track! I had one of those aha! moments a month or so back when my daughter looked over at a lady leaving the plant store’s basket and said, “that’s a beautiful succulent.” She’s 5. Needless to say I wasn’t the only one picking up my jaw off the floor.
Nice post John… I can tell you this from my own experience. When I was young I absolutely HATED working in the garden with my mother as she would always have me do the mundane jobs such as weeding or turning over the compost pile. Perhaps thats why I was always “Busy” when she needed help in the garden. One time she asked me to hold the wooden stake while she hammered into the ground with a sledge hammer, only thing was she missed the stake and nicely hit my wrist with the hammer which resulted in a very swollen painful wrist for one week. I was given a ‘pass’ on weeding until the swelling went down..
I distained gardening until I was a young, married homeowner and thought I was something else by planting flats of pachysandra. Years later I found that I hated all the pachy and wanted color which is when I started to dabble in gardening. I took it step by step and suddenly became a gardening nut!
Today, both my daughters like to enjoy gardening from afar. Even though one of my daughters works at the nursery as a cashier she is still not into the entire plant world but I think once she hits a certain age she will come around as she does have some experience now. The other daughter who never really got involved in any of my gardening helped me the other day plant seeds in my new garden. She planted snap peas while I planted beans and she made sure to make a big to-do about her planting the seeds. This is a girl who killed an air plant OK so I was a bit worried about the seeds she was sowing… Yesterday while examining all of my new plants in my garden I noticed that there are some leafs emerging from her snap peas.. When I told her you would have thought she hit the jackpot and won $1M in cash the way she reacted.. When it comes to gardening I think once they see the prize (aka .. veggie, flower, fruit, etc) they are more excited about the entire gardening thing. Give it time and they will come around.. 🙂
Leslie
My mom always let us choose a plant or two when we went to the greenhouse and each year we got to choose a vegetable to plant in the edible garden.
I didn’t like gardening for the longest time, but now I love it!
I try to get my son involved too. I think that one day, he will look back on the time that we spent in the garden and want to start one of his own. I know I did. My dad was the one I gardened with. I also remember that time as very fond bonding experience with my father. So, you know, you are growing more than plants when you garden with your kids 🙂
Keep up the good work with the kids. I have had no such luck with my daughter. I’ve tried on several occassions to get her to just help plant some impatiens telling her that she’ll want to know how to do this someday. “Dad, I’ll hire someone to do that.” She’ll learn when she gets out on her own.
Great post! I remember my mom getting into gardening when I was in high school. She’d drag us out to admire her work. I thought it looked cool when she was done. At the time, as a teenager, I had ZERO interest in joining her!
Now I spend hours playing in the garden and ‘drag my teenage kids out to admire my work’. They think it looks ‘cool’ but have ZERO interest in joining me! (wow – the circle of life!)
🙂 Yoga… 🙂
I laughed like a mutha f’er about you traumatizing your daughter by kicking a pot around your deck and swearing. LOL Sorry, but that was a hilarious image…I think your wife should have taken a picture of that one 😉
When I was a kid, I really thought I would never love gardening. I used to help my mum plant flowers, but I always did it really quickly. I thought if I did it really fast, there would be less chance of a bug getting on me. And I HATED getting dirt on my hands. What kid hates getting dirty? I was a little freak.
I actually didn’t learn to love gardening until I was in my 20’s…my mum still is amazed lol.
great post, I dont have kids, but what you do today they will rember for the rest of ther lives.Some of my earlist memories I have are standing in my grandparents garden,picking the giant heads off the peonies,saying look at the pretty flowers POPPA..he would laugh and say yep that a peoney..and then I would go and pick the head off an Iris.. and he would say yep thats and iris…Never getiing mad at all just laughing..and you know I think thats why I Love and Know all my flowers today because of him telling me every flower I picked .So now when I go out and pick my first bunch of peonies and bring them in my house, Set them on my kitchen table, even though hes been gone for allmost 20years I allways say, ” Look at the pretty flowers Poppa”..Tracie in Ontario