Aug 20, 2008

Teaching Grandchildren to Garden

To date, I’ve taught my two-year-old granddaughter (Madison) how to use metal spoons to achieve maximum clanging noise by banging them against resonant metal objects.

I’ve determined that pots and pans make the best, most irritating sounds. Empty washers and dryers are pretty good too.

I taught her how to use a flyswatter and to say “got that dumb fly.” Her overprotective mother, my daughter, told me at dinner the other night, “I don’t know where she gets all this stuff,” although the accusing look she shot at me told me she suspects.

Maddy follows me out to the garden without so much as a “by your leave” from her mother. If I’m in the garden and she’s here, she’s in the garden. Mom might think she’s sitting under the coffee table playing with her cuddlies, but that slamming door mom just heard was Maddy slipping out to the garden with Poppy.

Here’s how it works in the garden with Maddy. I plant seeds, she meticulously removes them and throws them on the walking path. She picks green tomatoes when I’m not looking and hides them empty planting pots.

Maddy also eats dirt. She inspects bugs. She has been bitten by mosquitoes. She was scratched on the finger and nose by the cat as she tried to deposit him into the compost tea container (it was a kind, not malevolent gesture on her part…she wanted to give him a bath).

She’s fallen in the garden and scraped her knees. She rides in my garden wagon atop a mount of soil and strewing it along the path. I always arrive with half the load I started with.

She’s got her own garden gloves and a plastic trowel and hand rake.Her mommy’s hoping for a prim and proper little girl. Got news for her.