Recently, my daughter and I were spending time together talking. The subject went to gardening. She is just beginning to plan her first garden for her new family’s home, and she wants to include her children in the process. I understand completely, because I love it when she comes to our house and wants to stroll the yard to see how the flowers and vegetables are doing (even at the expense of many mosquito bites in the summer!). It is fun and deeply satisfying to share tomatoes [1], cucumbers [2], Daylilies [3], and Hydrangea bouquets with her. When I pull into her driveway, it makes me smile to see her pretty Impatiens and Marigolds planted neatly in a flower bed.
Gardening just naturally invites family time. So, invite is what I did! I invited my daughter, Julia Stake, to write this month’s Flower Gardener column, in tribute to The Family Edition!
Here is what she wrote:
As a stay-at-home mom with two young children, life is very busy. Gardening has always been something I dreamed of doing but have either not owned the yard or the time. The yard came two years ago when we bought our first home with plenty of room for a garden. Owning the time came much later.
I have come to terms with the fact that owning my time is a matter of priorities and organization and I have to make time for the things I love. There is something so precious about watching life and growth unfold right before your very eyes, not only in your garden but also in your children. This summer, thanks to a few “leftover” plants from my mom’s garden, I had the opportunity to watch a little of both.
I enlisted the help of my 3½ year old daughter to put our tiny green bell pepper [4] plants in a large container pot by our sunny front door. She jumped at the chance for a new adventure, especially one that involved playing in the dirt. She loved filling the pot with soil, grabbing huge armfuls of dirt and throwing them in. Her dirt-smeared smile said it all as she got to use her very own spade to make holes for our little “belles.” Her small hands were so gentle with each plant as we talked about how they would grow taller and eventually make yummy peppers for our salads and suppertime meals.
Almost every day she helped me water them, and over time we began to see the fruits of our labor, or shall I say, little vegetables. Our plants did grow tall and blossomed with small and delicate white flowers. Then one day I noticed the first tiny pepper growing where a flower had been. Excitedly, I pointed it out to my daughter and we did a dance right there on the front porch. As we found other peppers growing, I tried to explain the process of pollination in three year old terms. After listening to me intently, she finally asked, “So, which one is the mommy pepper?” Oh, what a precious time it is to garden with my daughter.
Now we are reveling in our “harvest season,” showing off our peppers proudly to any friends or neighbors who come to visit. We love to count all the growing peppers. We water them together daily and we carefully pick the ones big enough to bring inside for use in a vegetable lasagna or stir-fry. Our joy with the pepper plants this summer has opened the door to my dream. We are going to plant broccoli and lettuce in containers for the winter and then till a plot of land in our backyard next spring for a summer garden.
It has been such a delight to see it all happen through the fresh eyes of a three-year-old. Her wonderment has rekindled a wonder inside of me for the beauty of God’s creations. So often, we get caught up in the busyness of our day-to-day lives and we don’t stop to enjoy the simple pleasures or allow the next generation to do the same. Until this summer, bell peppers were only something we grabbed in the grocery store while hurrying through our errands. Our lives of convenience, while comfortable, do not often lend themselves to teaching our kids the solid principles that will get them through - hard work, patience, endurance, and reaping what you sow. Now my daughter knows that God is the “ mommy” pepper and His creation is a beautiful work of art that develops over time.
I want to take the challenge to own the time and make it worth something that will last. I choose to seize these precious moments with my two daughters while they are young. I want to instill in them a love for doing things the “old fashioned” and a joy for the harvest of their hard work.
Julia Stake