I spent the evening sitting on my back deck soaking up the sunshine and filling my lungs with fresh air. At last, the weather is warming up, the rain has stopped and Spring is here. A frog is singing in our pond and my garden is growing.
I love to garden. Living where I do the season is short and that makes each gardening day even more precious. My husband tells me its cheaper than therapy for me. I can spend hours and hours on end digging, transplanting, hoeing and hauling. I lose total track of time. Every day I wander my garden to see which new plant is inching it's way out of winter hibernation. Every blossom that appears gives me a sense of awe and delight. My garden is nothing short of magic for me.
When I was growing up we didn't have computer games and social networking sites to take up our time and dull our imaginations. We didn't sit in front of a TV for hours on end. We went outside to play. As a family we regularly went to the mountains to hike, fish, pick wild flowers and have a picnic. I learned about my surroundings and wildlife. I learned how to skip flat rocks across the water and how awesome it was to be outside.
When I went to my Oma's house she taught me about growing a garden. I remember helping her plant nasturtiums and marigolds in the front of her house. I always felt important when she let me help her irrigate her dry-land garden by creating strategically placed trenches with a hoe so that the water that had to be hauled in by truck could find it's way to the roots.And of course the reward for all this hard work was that we picked and ate fresh vegetables together.
When Zoe comes to visit us, we do gardening things with her in the hope that we can instill a love of nature in her. Her parents often take her for nature adventures and to the Zoo. We all want her to value, enjoy and respect what no doubt is one of the greatest gifts we have been given.
She loves nature. Yesterday she was busy looking for Bambi, Thumper and Flower in the wilderness they were wandering in. It's OK that she found them on the DVD once they got home. Seems to me that strikes a good balance.
I worry about kids today. You don't see them playing outside very often. The American Pediatric Society has coined a new disorder "Nature Deprived Syndrome" because so many kids don't get to get in touch with nature on a regular basis. How sad.
Get those kids outside.Get them active and get them unplugged from all those digital devices. Don't deprive them the simple joy of being in touch with nature and themselves.
