Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Gardening with the kids.

L and T had a ball with me putting in our garden. I loved and cherished every second of the time that we spent together.
T and I worked on the garden during every spare moment of the Easter weekend. After his morning Easter Egg hunt we started putting up the fence. We struggled to push the wire into the clips on the fence posts. T and I would both push hard on the wires and finally they would clip in. We would smile at each other and hug.
After one tough clip T put out his hand for a high five.
"T, do you know that is the first time you ever offered ME a high five?"
T sat and thought about this and then smiled. "Wow!" he exclaimed. And then he slowly raised up his hand and offered me another one. I then received my first 100 high fives from T.
Later, L joined us for weed removal. L and T grunted and groaned and pulled up many weeds and stubborn roots. I hugged them after a big extraction and helped them with the humongous ones.
"Daddy you sure are strong!"
"You will both be stronger than me before long." I replied.
The kids like that answer.
T and L squirreled away many worms into their bug catchers. Later these would be deposited in the composter.
"Those worms are really going to mix up our compost!" I exclaimed.
"You betcha." Exclaimed T.
Finally it was time to get some seeds in. Broccoli and Lettuce were the crops du jour. The kids tried to dig rows, but they were very short and deep. I showed them how they could make the receptacle with their fingers.
L went to plant her broccoli seeds and realized that they had fallen out of the package. She looked crushed.
"oops, I exclaimed. Defective package. T, can L plant some of your lettuce seeds?"
T's response to these types of questions was always the same loving answer:
"Sure!"
L was satisfied and she helped T sow his rows of lettuce seeds.
Finally it was time to water. The temperature was at most 50 degrees. But that did not stop L from stripping down and sprinting through the sprinkler. T was right behind her. My hair stood up just watching them.
"Watch out for the seeds!"
"OK, daddy."
What a blast we had. I had been telling the kids bedtime stories about our garden all winter. Each time we read a Winnie the Pooh book I would tell them that we would have a garden just like Rabbit's. Those seeds were sown this Easter weekend where every time I asked T if he wanted to work in the garden he responded with:
"Sure!"

No comments: