Tuesday, June 8, 2010

I SEE How My Garden Grows

The joys of gardening...
the joys of cutting a beautiful flower grown from your garden...

eating veggies grown by your hand...

oh, the joys...
....

and the cat poop...
you spend hours weeding and pruning and getting it just perfect for the neighbors cat to use it as the local litter box!

the loud blue jays that believe they own my yard and trees and throw the apricots from those trees at me to scare me out of my yard!

oh and the WEEDS...
for years I've been blaming the weeds on the same nasty cats walking through the yard and the birds bringing the seeds from all over God's Kingdom and spreading them all over my beautiful yard...the hours and hours...days and days I spend removing those weeds from my garden...ARGH...where do all the weeds come from?!?

Well, here in Northern California we have been enjoying a beautiful late spring with wonderfully mild days and lots of rain (VERY abnormal!)...
and my son has had lots of days outside playing in my garden (we have no yard and "my garden" is lots of flowers and plants randomly planted by years of different home owners and me and ivy that I am in a constant battle with over areas that I deem "flower areas" and the ivy deems "ivy areas")...

I have a few rules for playing in my garden
1.  do not dig up my flowers or cut/break off my flowers
2.  do not tear leaves off plants or flowers
3.  do not kill any bugs (we are in their home...we can only kill them if they are in our home)
4.  do not rearrange my cobblestone walkway or lift up the cobblestones to find bugs (this might be the hardest rule for both children!) 
5.  respect the ivy and the scary ledge (that possibly goes to the center of the earth) at the edge of the garden that the we all have deemed "ivy area" and any and all items that fall into the ivy over the ledge become property of the ivy and anything living in the in the center of the earth.
6.  remove (or accidentally kill) any and all snails and slugs that are destroying my plants (ignoring rule 3 about this being their home...it's MY garden!)!

well...I sent the boy child out to play one morning last week, reminding him of the rules...# 4 being the hardest it was the one I highlighted that morning...
"Remember, don't pick up my cobblestones to look for bugs"...
"okay mom..."
and then I happily open up the windows so I can watch him while I begrudgingly happily stay inside and fold Mt. Laundry a few loads of laundry that have taken over the entire love seat in my living room that I have been able to keep contained in one stylish laundry basket...

as all wonderful moms I "watch" my son with my ears and since I can hear him singing weird funny songs that he makes up I know all is well...

as I slowly make my way through Mt. Laundry the few loads of laundry I decided to look out the window and check on the boy child...
...
...
he's crouched down really seriously involved in whatever he's doing...
has he found a bug?
is there a line of ants marching?
is he "removing" a snail?
...
seems like he might be digging something...
....
seems like I might need to make sure he's not digging up my bulbs...
....
I nicely walk out onto the porch,
"Hey Wilson, whatcha' doing?"
"I'm planting some flowers for you."
"What flowers? Where'd you get the seeds?"
"This flower right here has 67-100 (his favorite number) seeds on it, and I'm planting them!"
...
time for me to take a trip off the porch to look at said flower....
...
hmmm....

wow...
what I have been blaming on the nasty neighborhood cats and loud birds....the weeds...
was really my son...
my son had just spent a good hour planting the seeds from a few different type of weeds that I had yet to pull...and then he informed me that he made sure to plant them all over the garden not just in one spot!

he so gently removed all the seed pods from the weeds, using his sweet little fingers poked 100's of perfect holes in the ground, dropped the seeds in, covered them up...and then proceeded to water them with drops from the hose....

and now rule number 7...a rule that seemed so obvious
Do NOT plant WEEDS in mommy's garden!!!
I will now publicly apologize to the birds and cats for blaming the weeds on them...
I still hold them accountable for the poop...but who knows that could be the boy child also!

2 comments:

Linda said...

Isn't it heartwarming to know he has your horticulture bent? Just a little fine-tuning and very soon he can be pulling those weeds he planted! Well maybe in a year or two.

Joni said...

I seriously thought this post was going to end that he WAS the one responsible for the poop. So glad it turned out better than I expected :)