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Caya's Garden Plan and Sweet Mint

"Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer. Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life."
~Wendel Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating"


It was a rainy, chilly day today, so for an indoor activity I had Caya make a "Garden Plan" of all the veggies/fruits/flowers she would like to grow in our garden this year.  She looked through magazines, found pictures of things that she wanted to grow, and then cut (or had me help cut) and pasted them onto a poster paper.  

A site plan is one of the first steps in any gardening or restoration project.  In a classroom setting, having students plan and create a design for their own schoolyard helps create a sense of ownership towards the garden and what's being grown.  Cutting and pasting pictures seemed like an age-appropriate way to engage a 3-yr old.  She was actually really excited, did a great job finding pictures and glued them all down by herself.  We talked about things that could, or could not, be grown in a garden (either because it wasn't a vegetable or because its something we can't grow in our region), what types of things she likes to eat (I had to ask to put on the tomato on for Mommy and Daddy, because she doesn't like tomatoes), and what different herbs are used for.  Admittedly, I'm not a great cook, so I learned a bit about herbs today too.   No, we will not be growing apples in our garden, but she really wanted to put the apple picture on the poster.  Kili spent her time trying to gather and eat the paper scraps while Caya and I worked (it was recycled paper, so I'm sure it was fine, right?).

Caya's Garden Plan collage

Tasks completed - This week we planted sweet mint in one of our deck containers, finished mulching our front rain garden and shared flower bed (it is a shared bed between us and our next-door neighbors), cleaned up under our big pine tree and started planning a site for our new raised beds.
Caya and the mint

Kili posing while Caya works hard :)
Side note - there is a great article in the spring edition of Edible Madison about how to get kids to eat healthy food in the face of huge junk-food/fast food marketing campaigns aimed at children.  There were several good ideas (gardening and cooking with your kids was the main one).  Berry Wendell's simple advice was to let them taste good food.  This week I've been super unmotivated to cook decent dinners, the dishwasher being broke is one reason, so I'm hoping next week I'll be more inspired!


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