Rowen has been my garden buddy since he was 2 months old. Last year he mostly napped or sat on a blanket in the shade, watching clouds and cars and me. This year he is a sturdy 1 year old and is no longer content to sit on the sidelines. He's sure he knows the drill by now and demands to be included. If I'm putting seeds or plants in pots, he has to have a pot with soil in it too. If I'm pulling weeds, he goes around and pulls the leaves off of whatever is within reach. He adores dirt and growing things and just being outside.
I know some people have to convince their kids to join them in the garden, but right now my only problem is keeping him in a baby friendly zone of the garden. I have to make sure he's not near fragile seedlings, or pulling out my plant markers. Other than that I mostly let him do what makes him happy and just clean it up afterwards.
Here's him helping me pot things. He took all the dirt out of that little blue pot twice while we were out there. :-) Had a fair share of it on himself before I brushed it off to take the picture.
Right now I have a couple of pots that I'm keeping empty for him to play with, and I have a corner of the garden that isn't planted yet where he can roam free wrecking baby havoc on the clover and dandelions.
Sometimes I pile my weeds up near him so he can 'sort' them for me. :-)
He often picks up things and holds them up for me to see what he found. I'll tell him the name of it and he'll look at it and then pick up something else to be named. I like this game, and I'm hoping it's helping him to learn words for things. We also talk about the things we can hear while we're in the garden, and the things we can see in the garden. It's a lot of fun seeing a garden through a baby's eyes.
Check out the blog roll at KinderGardens, link on the right side of the blog. All summer you'll see posts from me about gardening with Rowen. My posts will join others and the best blogs will get prizes. :-)
2 comments:
What a good mama...you will have a full fledged gardener before you blink. Really even though my youngest is only 3 I miss having a 1 year old in the garden, enjoy him! And that froggy hat rocks! Kim
a boy after my own heart, what fun it is to have a youngling working in the garden with you! I mind how his daddy helped me when he was really young, wonder if he remembers that? Ask him if he remembers the garden plot we had had Loring AFB, up in Maine, when he was a wee one.
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