Kids Enjoy Gardening

I do live in Canada, don't I ? 

For heaven's sake, my husband was ice fishing through 30cm of ice a month ago and we had some snow on Monday. However, it was 24C outside a week ago so the daffodils are starting to bloom  and tiny leaves are beginning to unfurl. The weather has been so unpredictable that I am still dreaming about gardening more than I am actually out in it. Still, I can't help thinking about gardening this week.

I love to dig in the warm earth without gloves so that I am able to feel the moist earth as well as inhale its rich aroma. This love of dirt connected with my children's fascination with dirt.  My little people  loved digging with a small plastic shovel in their own area near me and I was free to garden to my heart's content. Sometimes a baby slept in our old-fashioned buggy under a tree, a toddler 'worked' beside me, preschoolers helped me plant and older kids filled watering cans.

For me, the garden was also the children's domain as well as mine because I wanted them in the garden, connecting with the earth. As  my kids participated in planting seeds, watering growing plants and picking fruit and vegetables, they became attuned to the rhythms of nature. Planting a bean seed and then eating handfuls of green beans from that one seed was magical to a my youngsters. They freely picked and ate beans, snow peas,raspberries, strawberries and carrots straight from the garden as snacks because they were not banned from a perfect, show piece garden. Now my kids are spoiled because they are use to garden ripe tomatoes, corn picked as the water in a pot comes to a boil and huge plates of fresh geenbeans with butter and salt and pepper.

Our gardens were lush and colourful but not gorgeous show pieces. They were filled with perennial flowers that could withstand being yanked, stood on and sat on. The gardens were and are huge, containing many more fruit and veggies than we could eat because we grew enough to give away to our generous friends and family for bartering with. Our family even grows enough  for the wild animals surrounding our little acreage because, in their opinion's, our garden is their own personal restaurant.

Some years the kids organized a road side vegetable stand. Everybody was involved
because the stand became an exciting adventure, especially to the littlest ones.  A few created signs (just getting them to stand up was hilarious), lugged tables and chairs down a 200m. drive way, and generally ran about yelling excitedly at each other as  kids hurried up to the house to get  more change, served drinks to the vegetable sellers, bellowed for a bathroom break  if they were stuck done at the road or screamed out to everyone how much money they had made so far. Even Dad and the oldest siblings were sucked into the mayhem.

Of course, my children complained about weeding especially when it was hot . To solve that problem they dumped buckets of cold well water over each others' heads and  just generally ran around screaming before attacking weeds. They made games out of their jobs, staged competitions when they picked potato bugs and helped make rhubarb jam and frozen strawberries, currants and raspberries.  Gardening wasn't just a hobby, it was a large part of their childhood. As adults, they still love plants and gardening.