Children

Light Through the Swiss Chard

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment
swiss chard leaf

Gardening with kids is a joy, but often it feels like double the work.  Its more messy and exhausting.  Now that it’s summer and my son is out of school, it will be  hard to get all the work done in our garden plot.  While I focus on my gardening tasks, I need to keep an eye on my son.   He will wander off from our plot, visit our garden neighbors and chat with a busy gardener or experiment with a hose nozzle that is not ours.  He forgets that he can not hurl sticks and stones in the garden or cut the grass near the plastic deer fence.  He is just too busy to help me weed, plant, or pick.  Except for yesterday, when he watered his garden bed and created a mud pool at our plot entrance.

All the chaotic and frustrating moments gardening with my son are tolerable when I remember the many priceless life lessons he has learned while at our plot.   Yesterday, I gave a bag of our swiss chard to the community gardener collecting donations for our local food bank.  My son asked me, “What is a food bank?”  I explained.  He asked more questions until I had no more answers.  I picked a bagful of Romain lettuce, gave it to my son and told him to give it to the “food bank” woman.    He carried the bag past several plots and hundreds of distractions to the right woman and cheerfully gave her our lettuce.

What lessons have your kids learned while gardening with you?

Sunflower and Gourd Seeds Planted

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sunflower and gourd seeds planted

My son has his own garden bed in our community garden plot. For the last two years he has only planted Giant Sunflower seeds in his garden bed. This year he planted Bottle Gourd seeds along with a new variety of Sunflower seeds.  My son plans to make his own birdhouses and musical instruments from the gourds he grows (we will consult the Gourd Reserve when it comes time for harvesting and drying the gourds).   He planted Magic Roundabout Sunflower seeds,  a  hybrid sunflower that branches out and produces more than one flower per plant through summer into fall.   I plan to brighten our house with cut sunflowers this summer and fall!

Everything from our garden plot does not need to be edible to be useful!

Moving Day for Tadpoles

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scooping up the tadpoles

Howard County Conservancy gives my son a big backyard where he can freely explore a creek, run in a field, study wildlife, feed a goat, grow a garden, hold a wiggling tadpole and observe its eyes under a magnifying glass and simply learn to value our beautiful natural world.

tadpoles' crowded home in stone pond

Last weekend, our family worked at the Howard County Conservancy. While my husband mowed the grass between the plots in the  community garden,  my son and I assisted with an Earth Day project.  The stone waterfall in the Honors Garden was temporarily turned off because thousands of tadpoles were living in it.

Our assignment, help relocate the tadpoles to a nearby creek in the Conservancy. A patient and knowledgeable Conservancy volunteer guided my son.  She helped him gather tadpoles in a net and place them in a container with water.  Then he carried the little oval-body-tailed swimmers about a 10 minute walk to the creek. We stepped through mud, rocks and weeds to get to the edge of the creek. My son slowly poured hundreds of tadpoles into the quiet creek.

tadpoles' new home

We watched the tadpoles adjust to their new home. The strong swimmers tried to swim upstream until they found a pocket of still water between some rocks. Others just let the stream carry them to the calm water.  We imagined the creek filled with frogs this summer.  We will look for them in June.   The meandering creek gives them plenty of space to thrive.

The frog population in urban communities is threatened by the commercial use of pesticides to maintain lawns.  We want to help frogs and toads thrive. They are good because they eat garden pests and insects that can harm plants and vegetables. How are you helping frogs and toads thrive in your garden?

Christmas Cactus

~ McArtor ~ 4 Comments
My Christmas Cactus

My Christmas Cactus has faithfully bloomed at Christmas for the past seven years.  I don’t do anything special to insure that it  blooms.  It stays in the same spot in front of a window that brings in morning sunlight.  It is in a clay pot that sits on a drain saucer filled with stones.  I water it about twice a week.

Each year when the pink flowers burst out of their buds, I think about the family that gave me the Christmas Cactus.  When I worked in an outpatient center at a Children’s Hospital, I helped a  young boy with Spina Bifida.  He could not walk and he had a severe pressure sore on his back.  This boy had the brightest smile and cheerful attitude.  He and his parents spoke only a few words of  English.  They came to the United States as refugees.  Grateful for the care that their son received at the hospital, the parents gave some of the staff a small Christmas Cactus.  My cactus has more than tripled in size.  I wonder how the little boy has grown.  Every year my cactus reminds me of that boy and how the greatest gifts have humble beginnings.  Then I think about another humble beginning…. God’s greatest  gift to mankind began in a baby.  Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas Tree

~ McArtor ~ 5 Comments

This week I brought home carrots and radishes from our garden plot. We still have carrots, spinach and turnips growing under row covers. Today we did not visit our garden plot, but searched for a Christmas tree.

Our son found our Christmas tree today at a local Christmas tree stand.  He insisted on bringing home a particular lopsided and thin fraser fir tree that  fell on him.  The unsteady tree gently fell as my son quickly weaved through the maze of Christmas trees standing at their posts.  Immediately after the tree toppled, my son figured the tree picked him and wanted to come home with us.  My husband and I continued to look for a fuller and more conical shaped tree. But our son did not give up.  He demanded we bring home the 6 foot tree that tried to catch and tickle him.  We could not find a better tree to fit in our home.   The lopsided tree now stands steady as it shines bright with white lights and cherished ornaments.

our tree holding my favorite ornament

Saving Fall Leaves for the Garden

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The wind swirls and scoops up leaves from the neighborhood and dumps them into our tiny front yard.  The yard is covered with brown leaves when  the only tree in it,  a Bradford Pear, still has its green leaves.  Every fall we collect at least 4 tall bags of  these extra leaves.

We are grateful for the extra leaves because we save them for our garden plot.  We keep our compost healthy by adding the extra leaves to our compost bin. The brown carbon rich leaves balance the green nitrogen rich kitchen waste in our composter.  We add a dense layer of  minerals and nutrients to our garden plot by mulching the garden soil with the leaves.   We provide winter protection for tender plants in our garden by surrounding them with the leaves.  When our fig tree was smaller,  we protected it from the cold winter winds by covering it with  leaves and a  burlap blanket.

My son jumping into a pile of our extra leaves.

This fall, gathering and chopping our leaves became easier due to our new  electric leaf blowing-vacuum- mulchinator.  We do not have a grass lawn in our front yard, but perennials and bushes.  It is tedious to comb out the leaves from our Nandina, Hydrangea and Azalea bushes and flower beds.  Instead of raking the leaves into piles and chopping them with a lawn mower, we gently vacuumed up the leaves and created mulch at the same time.  Our new garden toy is gentle on our plants and saves time.  Fantastic!

We did not vacuum up all the leaves immediately.  We saved some for my son and dog.  My son likes jumping from our front door steps into a mound of leaves then pretending he is a bird sleeping  in a nest.    My dog likes to catch, in his mouth, bunches of leaves tossed up in the air.

How do you collect and use or play in your fall leaves ?

Our Little Garden Helper

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Cutting String and Tomato Vines
Tangled in Tomato Vines

My five year old son surprised us this past sunny Saturday when he eagerly followed our instructions and  helped us cut up and compost our tomato plants.  Often our son does not want to do the garden jobs we ask him to do.  He prefers to create his own jobs.  Here is a list of my son’s top 10 favorite garden jobs:

1.  Hold the hose and water the plants, dirt, fence and sky.

2.  Dig holes in the dirt and bury treasures or plant cut flowers.

3.  Throw the inedible fruit into the compost bin and stir it.

4.  Place or slam rocks around the garden beds.

5.  Plant sunflower seeds and sit under his tall sunflower umbrellas.

6.  Hit the sunflower  heads with sticks and watch the seeds fall.

7.  Create a web fence for the garden beds by twisting and weaving string through sticks he staked around the bed.

8.  Find bugs, worms and butterflies.

9.  Cut something!

10. Throw something!

What are your little helpers’ favorite garden jobs?