The forecast today was for a high of fifteen, so I thought we might make our last zoo trip of the year, before it gets too cold to venture outside for hours of limited movement at a time. Sadly, what the forecast did not mention was that the morning low was 1. One sad, lonely little degree; and much too much too cold for the zoo. By eleven it had only climbed to eight. Eight!

Scratch the zoo, I said; "Frances, do you want to go to the bookstore or the dress store?"

"Book store!" she said.

"That's my girl!" I squeezed her. "You did such a good listening and good putting your toys away last week, that today you can go where you like. Are you sure you want to go to the bookstore?"

"Yeah!"

"What do you want to do at the bookstore?"

"I want to look at the toy animals."

"Oh. Ok...."

"Can I hold them?"

"Sure."

So we went to the bookstore; and after the bookstore, we went across the street to a real sit-down restaurant where Frances ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries. She was her usual inhumanly well-behaved self, charming all the staff and patrons, never even squeaking above her normal volume, not throwing any food on the floor or asking awkward questions about the folks seated at other tables.

How did I luck out?

So, having rewarded her for her exceptional behaviour last week by taking her to the bookstore, and then rewarding her for her wonderful behaviour in the bookstore by taking her out for french fries and a grilled cheese sandwich, I felt I was then in the position of needing to reward her for her unbelievably good behaviour at the restaurant, but I didn't want to spend any more money.

"Do you want to go to the park, Frances?"

"Yeah!"

We put the books inside the front door, took off our jackets--it had finally warmed up, but was much too late to go to the zoo without dealing with rush-hour traffic--and set off through the woods to the park. The acorn assault was over, and leaves in shades of orange and brown thickly littered the floor, through which squirrels rustled and leapt. We collected a few gorgeous leaves for her collection, but the offerings were slimmer this year than last.

I don't know if it's the unseasonably mild temperatures we've had, or the relatively plentiful rain, but the colours this fall have been decidedly muted. The maple trees are mostly a muddy burgundy, the ash trees an amber yellow, the rest of them a crispy dusty brown. It's sad. Even the staghorn sumacs, which normally turn a violent scarlet, are this year only red.

I'd been looking forward to introducing Frances to the fall colour change; but there's not much to see.

Once we got to the park, we took turns going down the twisty slide (Frances insisted, and insisted too that I sit on the curb to watch her go down, just where she sat to watch me). The air is turning dry; each run down the slide left my hair and blue jeans static-y, and after only twenty minutes, my lips were chapped and my hands and mouth were as dry as the sahara. Time to go home.

It's fall. Even if it doesn't look like it.

Posted by Andrea at 3:25 PM | Comments (3)

Meanwhile, back at the farm....

We are collecting free admission tickets for the local farm like nobody's business.

They give every customer who spends more than $25 on food a coupon good for four free admissions to the animals and games area; since I often make it a point to shop there before doing the weekly groceries in order to boost our local food content and we don't always have time to hang around and pat the goats, we are very close to being able to host a party out there.

It's more fun now, too, with the weather a bit cooler and the crowds a little thinner. Last week, when Frances and I went with a friend and her daughter, we had the place to ourselves. Our girls ran under the rope barriers on the mazes, hogged the swings and monopolized the rabbits, and it was fine, because there was no one else there to be put out by it. The animals too--especially the rabbits--were more social in the cooler weather and could be more easily enticed to the fence for a potential treat. (This farm allows you to feed the animals, as long as you feed them proper food.)

What eventually comes of our one day of strict 100-mile eating remains to be seen; but if nothing else, it introduced me to a wonderful place to buy food. Erik loves their apples. I love the onions, peppers and tomatoes, all piled high in glossy healthy heaps and the tomatoes slightly soft to the touch and red right through to the core. The peaches are gorgeous, soft and ripe; and the fall-bearing strawberries and raspberries may be smaller and more oddly-shaped than what's available in the supermarket, but they are twice as sweet.

Frances cares about none of this (though she does enjoy playing in the toy area while I shop, and sometimes she likes to help me pick the food). She likes the animals. Mostly the rabbits, to which I say, thank god we don't eat rabbit.

The farm, besides providing local fruits and vegetables, also raises and slaughters grass-fed beef, pork, chicken and turkey. The beef we've had, and I admit to feeling a slight twinge when we stop by to pet and feed the hulking cow in the pen, almost certainly destined for slaughter herself someday. The eggs we've had; and on this count I can feel proud, since they're not only ethically raised and fed but the eggs themselves are noticeably healthier. You might not have thought of this with your last supermarket eggs, but after trying these, there is a quantifiable difference. The eggs of the grass-fed free-range hens, first of all, vary markedly in size, so when I buy a dozen from the fridge in the store, they look much less like the mass-produced products of a factory. The shells are also much thicker and stronger--I need to bash them against the side of a bowl to crack them--and the whites are gellier, for lack of a better word. Thicker. Less runny.

I will never buy supermarket eggs again, if I can manage it.

Here's the sticky part:

In Canada, Thanksgiving is held in early to mid October, this year on October 9th. (This makes sense, when you consider how much earlier the growing season ends in the north.) I would like to make a turkey. Specifically, I would like to purchase and cook one of their turkeys. One of the turkeys that Frances has admired, and fed; one of the turkeys I took a picture of her with.

Mostly I think this is fine. Didn't our ancestors grow up with the concept of killing for food everywhere around them, whether they hunted or farmed? Weren't children, up until two or three generations ago, intimately familiar from their earliest memories with the concept of slaughtering animals for food? Did it scar them for life?

No; and besides, one of the reasons I bring Frances here is so that she will learn and understand that food doesn't come from factories, it grows.

Still; if Frances manages to connect the turkey on her plate to the white-feathered gobbling bird at the farm, I'm not exactly sure what I'll say. I have no practice in this. My great-grandmother would scorn my hesitation, having hunted and skinned rabbits for furs from the time she was seven years old, but it's a little harder to explain these facts of life esconced within a modern suburb where the closest most kids get to a natural encounter is a Disney movie.

(cross-posted to The GreenHouse.

Posted by Andrea at 8:05 AM | Comments (17)

TGT: Acorns

In September, the Oak trees in our neighbourhood turn mean.

They are always an aloof, stand-offish bunch; the local woodlot is obviously filled with oak trees, as evidenced by oak leaves in varying states of decomposition two inches thick on the ground, but can you ever find one? No. Every visible tree is a maple or birch. But if you stand still and look up, straight up, in the top canopy you can sometimes see a microscopic oak leaf in profile against the sky.

In the fall, they turn on the humans, pelting them with acorns. The normal peaceful quiet of the woods is replaced by a thunk-thunk-thunk, as acorns, falling from 20 or 30 or 40 feet in the air, hit the ground rhythmically. One feels the need for an umbrella. (Which one never remembers to bring.) One worries exactly how similar getting hit with a bullet and beaned on the head with an acorn would be, with those kinds of heights involved.

But we go anyway, risking life and limb or, at least, a decent-sized goose-egg on the scalp. For one thing, the squirrels and chipmunks are out in full force. All summer long they try to hide from the humans (and who can blame them?), but when the air turns nippy, they're everywhere. You can't look around without seeing them scampering down logs, leaping over stumps, rustling in the decomposing leaves, jumping from bough to bough overhead, all to the tune of thunk-thunk-thunk.

For another, Frances loves acorns.

Why do I ever bother buying her toys? This isn't the first time I've asked myself this, but despite never having found a satisfactory answer, I keep doing it. Still, I think she'd be perfectly happy with a few rubbermaids full of acorns in the basement. They're versatile. You can pretend they are people or animals. You can throw them, like balls; and if you throw them hard enough you can watch the tops pop off. You can spill them to hear them clatter on the ground. You can count them. You can watch them turn from the grassy green they fall off the tree with to the deep coffee-brown of a ripe nut. We now have buckets of acorns in both the front and back yards, and amazingly, they haven't been stolen by the resident squirrels yet.

It's another sign that fall is here, even if the weather is uncharacteristically warm. It might feel more like July, but the trees aren't fooled. It's time for the acorns to fall.

(crossposted to The GreenHouse)

Posted by Andrea at 1:16 PM | Comments (3)

GreenHouse

A few months ago I was bewailing the lack of good online resources for parents interested in getting their kids in touch with the outdoors. There are tons of websites if you want to find out about cool green gadgets to buy, green vacations to go on, green causes to support, green organizations working for solutions, and green celebrities of various types, but very little on how, exactly, parents can work to foster a love of nature in their kids.

So, you know me. I decided to make one.

At the moment it is nothing particularly exciting and I expect it will grow at a glacial pace, given the other commitments I've already made. But I wanted to let you all know about it in case any of you would like to be involved.

Some of you already have been writing posts on your own blogs on your own Green Toddler-type initiatives. If you think you can write one post per month minimum on a similar topic and feel that you have a glaring lack of environmental expertise, do I have the blogging opportunity for you!

What I want are bloggers from a variety of different bioregions (both in terms of geography and in terms of urban/suburban/rural) who either have kids or plan to. Examples of topics include gardening with kids, birdwatching, learning about insects or animals, geology (rocks), any kinds of plants or fungi, in terms of any sort of location from curbs or abandoned lots or sidwalks to state or national parks. You could, for example, write a series of posts about letting your toddler muck around with a potted cactus on the apartment window ledge, or learn about insects from the creepy crawlies in the kitchen, or examining the different kinds of stones in the back garden--all kinds of things. Anything that appeals to your imagination, is doable from where you live, involves the non-human environment, and is neither didactic (preachy) nor expensive. The basic idea is: go out with kids (or in some cases, stay in), have fun, write about it.

Or you can go check it out and let me know what you think.

Posted by Andrea at 2:26 PM | Comments (7)

TGT: Frances's Froggy Friends

Monday, while we were tidying up the backyard--or, all right, as Erik was tidying up the backyard--in acknowledgement of the winding down of summer, he came upon a small grey frog hiding in the shadow of the bag of potting soil. Before meeting the frogs of this neighbourhood, incidentally, I had no idea adult frogs could be this small. Today's was just about as long as the outer joint of my thumb.

Frances loves frogs not only on their own account these days, but also because she's seen that Max and Ruby episode a few too many times--the one where Max makes friends with a frog, and calls him "friend!" Only Ruby can't see the frog and thinks Max is talking to an imaginary friend, and hijinks ensue. So the poor frogs, in addition to having to deal with a gigantic (to their view) person stalking them all over the deck gibbering excitedly, also are blasted with "FRIEND!" whenever they are spotted. Cruel, but cute.

Frances, at two-and-three-quarters (I am trying to induce her to say this, but so far she still insists she's two-and-a-half) is a pro with the frogs. She knows how to hold her hands together to make a good platform for froggy feet, and how to hold still so they won't jump away; today, she figured out how to pick them up. This is significant not only in terms of her frog-chasing development but also because it gave me a chance to whip out the camera and take a few shots.

I won't post the ones showing her face, so you'll have to take my word for it: the expression of overwrought wonder is priceless: the mouth rounded into a perfect O, the huge blue eyes round, the fixed interest, the tiny grey frog trembling in the foreground. It was one of the kinds with sticky pads on its feet, so when Frances would go to put it down and turn her hand over to dislodge it, it remained there, stuck to her, upside down.

The rest of the day she asked to go outside and hold her friend the frog again. I'm not sure the frog felt quite so positively about their little interaction, however, so when she was distracted I put him down in a garden near the deck where he could hide himself.

~~~~~

I am just about to give up on the back garden.

It's not that nothing will grow there, it's that it all gets eaten. About half of the perennials I put in over the spring and summer are still there, the rest were hauled up by the roots and carried off by one critter or another as dinner. The doves even roost in my flower boxes (which explains those large, bare hollows in the dirt). And I probably could devise a way to keep the animals out, but why would I? The animals are why I like the backyard so much to begin with. Not to mention Frances's attachments to the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and frogs.

I have the winter to think about it, but at the very least I have a new requirement to add to next spring's garden shopping list: inedible.

Posted by Andrea at 3:08 AM | Comments (10)

TGT: Worms (for real)

Dear Readers: You're not trying to suck us into another long-winded post about your insecurities, are you?

Andrea: What? When have I ever done that?

...

OK. No, I'm not. This really is a post about the worms, a sort of midway-to-harvest lessons learned:

1. One bin is not enough for a family of 3 unless you eat every bit of produce that comes into your house and only need to dispose of skins and cores.

2. Not only will you need two bins, you will need two Saturday Newspapers' worth of shredded paper in each.

3. Drill more holes than I did: Maybe sixteen or twenty in the bottom, and eight or ten in the top.

4. If you decide to bravely follow in my footsteps and use one bin with one or 1 1/2 newspapers and twelve holes on the bottom, five on the top, you will run out of space to bury food and your worms will get waterlogged and start trying to escape. Then they will die on your floor and dehydrate, leaving a dozen brown squiggly lines all over the cement. (At least they don't have skeletons.)

You will have to decide if it is an appropriate time to introduce your toddler to the concept of death.

5. When you run out of space to bury food, you will be tempted not to feed them again until all the food in the bins is gone. Note that this time period should not exceed three weeks, because the worms won't be able to eat the stuff on the bottom--it's waterlogged--and they will die.

6. Prop the bin off the floor a little to let the water out. If you don't, a sludge of half-decomposed food scraps will slowly form under the bin until you finally realize that, oh my god, the worms are drowning in the bottom of the bin it's so wet, no wonder they're all trying to escape! Then you will move the bin off the floor and in so doing reveal puddles of rotten water that will reveal to you the true meaning of "smells like evil." As you scrub it off the floor with the strongest chemicals available in your house, you will curse your husband for a lucky SOB--he only had to clean up a few random piles of cat puke that day.

7. If you can't bury the food deeply enough, you may end up with fruit flies. You can look online and find plans to build fruit fly traps. Or you can read Brenda's blog.

You will have to decide if this is an appropriate time to introduce your toddler to the concept of killing things.

8. Remember: Two bins. Two thick newspapers each. More holes. Propped off the floor.

9. And rip the teabags open before you put them in, because those lazy little suckers aren't going to eat through them without a bit of help. If you don't, be prepared to find fossilized former tea bags in the compost when you go to use it.

Happy Worming!

(Coming Soon: A new project, the rain barrel)

Posted by Andrea at 7:14 AM | Comments (7)

TGT: A Trip to the Farm

When I got that bee in my bonnet about doing a 100-mile food day, it left me with a conundrum: How could I ever find a place to buy food where I could be sure it was grown within 100 miles of my house?

There are several good farmer's markets in Toronto, but they're in Toronto. Going downtown on a weekend for grocery shopping does not sound like a fun time to me. The local grocery store (*ahem* Loblaws *cough*) did not stock Ontario strawberries even once this year, and strawberry season is over. Every strawberry for sale in that store has come from California (and, if familial experience with the grocery industry is any guide, they came by truck).

There is a local farmer's market in the basement of a Waldorf school nearby, which sells produce from some local farmers. I have been there now two or three times, and they have some nice things, but not always as much fruit as I would like and what fruit there is often comes from far away (organic apples from Chile, for example).

What to do?

Fortunately, my good friend Google came to our family's rescue and saved us from a day of potatoes and sweetpeas by introducing us to Forsythe Family Farms, which is near enough that the car's air conditioning doesn't have a chance to cool us down before we get there.

This farm has pick-your-own produce of various kinds for the entire growing season, a store that sells produce from the farm as well as produce from neighbouring farms, and a petting zoo/fun farm area for kids.

Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed and unwisely mentioned our plans to Frances. For the next 75 minutes, all I heard was, "We're going to a farm! Can we go to a farm now, Mummy? Are we going to a farm now? We're going to a farm?"

It did not disappoint. There were cows.

There were goats (which she fed all by herself.)

There were sheep. There were turkeys.

There was a slide. There were bunny rabbits.

There was a wagon ride. There was also the market, where we bought fresh, local strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, hothouse tomatoes, green onions, sweetpeas, new potatoes, an onion, and a grass-fed beef roast (which was raised and slaughtered on the farm). They also had eggs, honey, preserves and jams, rutabagas, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, home-made baked goods, pork sausages and chicken and lots of other great stuff which we didn't need to buy today. As the season progresses, they will have fresh and local beans, corn, apples, squash and pumpkins for sale. And it was so much more fun than going to the supermarket; instead of trying to distract Frances by bribing her with zookies or a new pair of Elmo slippers, I did my produce shopping in twenty minutes and then Frances got to run around feeding and petting animals for an hour and a half.

The question now is how to turn all of the ingredients into a day's worth of meals. Stay tuned.

Posted by Andrea at 7:01 AM | Comments (15)

TGT: Birdies and Other Backyard Wildlife

The suburbs, as we have all heard many times, are a steamroller of environmental destruction: they pave over prime farmlands and wilderness areas, turn wetlands into parking lots for megamalls, turn every minor errand into a drive which produces air pollution, and necessitate the acquisition of mountains of crap to fill over-sized homes that no one really needs but everyone wants, and good luck finding anything else anyway because builders (around here at least) are convinced that one will only buy a home under 2,200 square feet if one is destitute and so they never bother to build one.

Perhaps the only saving grace of the entire institution of suburbia is the ease with which one can introduce children to minor wildlife. Any backyard of any size will at least have dandelions and ants, and with a bit of effort and luck, you can entice many more interesting species into a shared habitat.

We are more fortunate than most: there is the nearby woodlot which is just barely big enough that if you stand on the path you can't see the houses at its edge; in other words, it's not big enough for anything really interesting (bears, deer, coyotes) but it's plenty big enough for anything you'd want to introduce a toddler to. And there are the trees behind our house, which form an unbroken chain (except for one middling-sized suburban road) to the woodlot.

The last owners of our home had four birdfeeders in the backyard, one of which (for large birds) they left behind; the other three had only hooks remaining. This year, we took advantage: we put out a new feeder for finches and another for small non-finch birds, and kept the existing large one filled with mixed birdseeds containing lots of black oiled sunflower seeds. (Non-oiled stripey-looking sunflower seeds are a big draw for squirrels, and squirrels will frighten off birds; so if you want birds, don't get a birdseed with non-oiled stripey-looking sunflower seeds. Yes, those are the cheap ones. On the other hand, we got a mix called "Squirrel-Proof" which contains the stripey kind but it's had something added that squirrels can't stand the taste of, and they're not touching it. So that's another option.) The fourth hook is meant for the hummingbird feeder which I have yet to fill and put out.

One of the new feeders was a little plastic tube with perches and small holes (maybe 3 mm to a side). Finches love these, and finches' favourite food is nyjer seed, so we bought a big bag of that. The other birdfeeder was a "squirrel-proof" model set on springs so that the feeding ports would close if any heavy animal made its way on to it, and we bought some fruit-and-nut mix for that one. The squirrel-proof feeder was more expensive at $30 (the finch feeder was $10) but it works. I've seen the squirrels trying to eat out of it, and they can't.

Last but not least, because I do like squirrels (I just don't want them scaring the birds away from the birdfood) we got some peanuts.

Did it work?

And how.

Last year we got birds, but only grackles, blue jays and doves, to the large birdfeeder (which we kept stocked with the cheap birdseed containing non-oiled stripey sunflower seeds); mostly, we got squirrels, who would eat all of the sunflower seeds and scatter the rest of the seeds to the ground where they took root and grew. Not really the effect I was going for.

This year, we've had--so far--grackles, blue jays, doves, cardinals, goldfinches, chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, crows, robins and woodpeckers. We've had chipmunks and the occasional rabbit. Oh, and squirrels, of course, who love the peanuts and are now so tame that they will approach us within two feet and stand there, wiggling their tales, until we make with their dinner.

The goldfinches will come to the finchfeeder four or five at a time, one per perch, and will eat the whole thing down from full to empty within ten days.

The chickadees will perch on the squirrel-proof feeder, take the bits they like and, in the process, scatter the bits they don't to the ground underneath where the doves, blue jays, cardinals, robins and woodpeckers find a tasty snack. The chipmunk likes the leavings, too. The rabbit, unfortunately, is more interested in my plants.

We've even seen a baby blue jay having a quick snack in the squirrel-proof feeder.

Frances adores all of it.

Whenever she sees a bird, she points it out and screeches, "Look, Mummy! A dove/robin/bluejay/goldfinch/chickadee! Aww, isn't it cute? What a cute little baby bird! Aww!" And she will sit down and watch them for at least a minute at a stretch and sometimes several. She asks to help me fill up the birdfeeders with new seed and will go to the window or the back door to look whenever she hears a birdsong close by.

But her favourites are still the squirrels. If I even so much as mention that I see a squirrel in the backyard, she will race to the door, beg to go out, and then demand peanuts to throw. I let her have them but her throwing arm isn't well-developed yet, so most of them land on the stairs to the deck where the squirrels aren't yet brave enough to tread, most of the time (unless we're inside); so I throw a handful out on to the grass. And then?

"Look, Mummy! A squirrel! A little baby squirrel!"

"Actually, that's a grown-up squirrel."

"A little baby grown-up squirrel! It's so cute. It's got a peanut. It got a peanut, Mummy! It's eating the peanut. What a cute little squirrel!"

"Yes, it is."

"It's running away! It's running away with the peanut. Where is it going, Mummy?"

"It's going home to eat the peanut. It will be back soon."

"There it is! There's the squirrel! The squirrel's on the fence! It's climbing down the fence, Mummy! It's in the back garden! It's in the grass! It found a peanut! It's eating the peanut Mummy!"

"Yes, look at that!"

"It's going away again. Where is it going, Mummy?"

Repeat, until all peanuts are eaten.

The best times are when three or four squirrels are in the yard chowing down those peanuts as fast as their little choppers can chomp. Frances is delirious with excitement. All the squirrels, the cute little baby grown-up squirrels, eating the peanuts! It's too much for mortal toddler to bear. And she never gets tired of it. Every day, the squirrels are just as exciting as they were yesterday.

We have been having a lot of fun with this. Enough fun that some days, for thirty to sixty minutes, we just sit outside on the deck and watch the birds and the squirrels and throw peanuts while Frances screeches at them--and you know, for a toddler, that's damned good. That beats TV. We've been having so much fun with it, in fact, that I am going to make Frances a little book of stories of animals she's seen in our backyard, illustrated with the photos I've taken. She can read it in the winter to remember all of the animal friends she made when it was bright and warm outside.

~~~~~

So if you have a yard, and that yard has any trees, and some of your neighbour's yards have trees, and those trees form some kind of chain (it doesn't need to be close), you can probably reproduce this.

The easiest and the cheapest are the squirrels. Get some plain, unsalted peanuts in the shell, put them out, and if there are squirrels in the area, they will find you. Blue jays also love peanuts so if there are any jays nearby, they will find you too. And blue jays are bold so they won't be shy about taking them.

Goldfinches are also relatively common and easy to please. They like small trees or large shrubs for habitat so a lack of large trees is not an issue. The feeder is cheap ($10) and the nyjer seed is also not expensive. If you are in Canada, you can find nyjer seed at Canadian Tire. And the males are a bright, beautiful, unmistakable yellow (the females are a duller yellow-brown, but still hard to miss), like a canary with black markings. After filling the feeder and hanging it somewhere close to large shrubs or small trees, sprinkle some nyjer seed on the ground so they can see it while they're flying. Once they've found you, they'll be back.

If you want to attract large birds (grackles, jays, cardinals, doves, robins, etc.), any birdfeeder with solid perches and large openings will be fine. You can get a birdseed mix (there are varieties for many different kinds of birds available) or put out peanuts and sunflower seeds. If you want small birds, you will have to get one with small openings or one that's squirrel-proof. Larger birds and squirrels will frighten away small birds.

Footnote A: All bird species herein are from South Ontario. I can't speak for elsewhere, but you could probably google advice for your area.

Footnote B: We keep our cat indoors, in part because she behaves badly when she gets outside often, and in part because I don't want to frighten away the squirrels. If you have cats or dogs that use your yard, this post might not apply. Then again, it might. I really have no idea.

Some resources:

http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=39

http://www.backyardwildlifehabitat.info/index.htm

http://www.wildbirds.com/Default.htm

Posted by Andrea at 7:39 AM | Comments (15)

Review: EcoKids: Raising Children Who Care for the Earth, by Dan Chiras

There is, in the environmental field, a perennial tension between academic and popular writing. I'm sure this tension is common as dirt in every field; the difference is, environmental theories and data might be required to, you know, save the human species or at least preserve our civilization in something approximating the luxury to which we have become accustomed.

So it's a dilemma. Most of the interesting, highly factual, detailed and innovative stuff is hidden away in academic journals where the only people who see it are other environmentalists. Popularizers are often roundly criticized for "dumbing it down" for a general audience.

Alas, today I find myself on the side of the snooty academic journals. Environmental theories and data need to be popularized, but not like this.

The basic idea is an interesting one. How does a concerned parent go about instilling environmental values in their children? Unfortunately, this book commits the cardinal sins of most parenting manuals: the answers are too simple, too pat, and therefore unlikely and not applicable to many situations. At times the advice veers into the outright bizarre, as when he advises parents to inculcate environmental values into other people's kids; on p. 104, he writes, "Teach them [your kids] to ask [their friends] questions. 'Wouldn't it be better if we recycled these pop cans rather than throwing them by the side of the road?' Or, 'Wouldnt' it be better if we walked to the skate park, rather than getting a ride from one of our parents?' Or, 'We're eventually going to run out of oil, so wouldn't it be better if we found environmentally friendly alternatives now?'"

Is it just me, or is it safe to say that a fourteen-year-old given to spouting these bon mots at his classmates would find himself shunned in the cafeteria in short order?

Some of his suggestions for parents are worse, for example, the list on pages 177 & 178 from his book titled Superbia!, on how to make the neighbourhood you live in sustainable:

"10. Create a neighbourhood mission statement.
"...16. Replace asphalt and concrete with porous pavers. [I'm so sure the Town would love it if we started ripping up the street.]
"...23. Establish alternative water and waste systems. [Sure! Because don't most of us own garbage trucks? And isn't a good weekend project to rip out a few miles of sewer pipe to refit it to a locally-built water treatment plant?]
"...28. Narrow or eliminate streets, converting more space to park or edible landscape, walkways and picnic areas. [Again, I have to think the Town would have something to say about that.]
"...30. Create a mixed-use neighbourhood. [What, you mean the people on my street should just up and decide to have a mixed-use neighbourhood? "Say, let's kick Joe and his family out of the house on the corner and turn it into a factory, and Susan and Paul at the other end can move into Mary and Joel's house and we'll turn the empty one into a grocery store."]
"...31. Foster diversity."

(sigh)

Maybe it's because I have experience and education in the area that I was so frustrated by the book; the environmental information was both too basic as well as outright wrong on occasion--for instance, when he claims that hydrogen is a root-level solution for air-pollution. Which it would be, if hydrogen weren't produced with electricity generated in coal-burning power plants. The root-level solution requires shutting down those coal plants and getting our electricity from somewhere else; then and only then will hydrogen be a clean fuel.

Too much of what was intended for the kids came off as preachy, and I can't see most kids swallowing it easily. That kind of child-programming is what leads to college-age rebellion, which isn't my goal or the goal of most parents reading the book, I imagine. I'd rather give my kids the information and help them learn to think critically and let them come to their own conclusions than try to stuff a pre-determined set of values down their throat, where they are sure to choke on it. My parents tried very hard to turn me into a Good Little Baptist Girl (tm); now I'm a witch. Didn't work very well. But taking me to the woods and sending me to camp turned me into an environmentalist even though they never once preached at me about it.

Or maybe I'm weird. But I've read now in several places (including this one) that surveys of well-known adult environmentalists in various fields consistently find that a universal or near-universal factor leading to their vocation is early positive childhood experiences in nature. So it seems that you can spend a lot of time outdoors and still grow up to be an anti-environmentalist, but if you don't get that experience, you almost certainly won't care deeply about the environment and turn that caring into consistent action.

There are some redeeming passages. There's a good list on pages 51-52 of developmentally-appropriate outdoors activities for kids by age. The list for kids age nine months to seven years includes getting a pet, visiting petting farms and zoos, local butterfly pavillions and reading animal stories. Doable, and not didactic. For ages 8-11, he recommends taking kids to local or State parks or forests, meadows, lakes, ponds, etc., and sitting still while they play however they like. I can see that.

Unlike, on page 52, "Sign your child up for a work trip with a local conservation group to build or repair trails or plant trees. Go along with your child, if possible, to share in the work and the fun. Talk about why you are doing it, especially the benefits your work will create."

Yeah. I'm sure kids would love that. And they wouldn't resent it at all, or be at all bitter, or decide to rebel by ripping out tree seedlings.

No, it's not as terrible as that; but the annoying parts were really annoying. The idea is a good one and a lot of the basic environmental information is decent, so if you are looking for an introduction to the issues and different actions to solve them, it's not bad. It isn't my favourite, but then, I've been reading this stuff for well over a decade now, so I'm pretty hard to please.

I'll leave you with something positive, if overly simplistic and preachy: The list from pages 161-162 of "Twelve high-impact activities" that families can stop doing to have a lighter touch on the earth, which by and large are both doable and applicable to a wide range of homes and family situations in a wide range of areas:

1. Use compact flourescent lightbulbs.
2. Add insulation to attic and walls, use insulated curtains and shades, do a blower door test and seal cracks and openings.
3. Keep the thermostat at 68F/20C in the winter and 78F/25C in the summer; plant shade trees to help keep the house cool in summer. [Note: if your big windows are right over the driveway, as mine are, this won't work for you.]
4. Install water-conserving fixtures and toilets and replace worn-out appliances with water- and energy-efficient models.
5. Water the lawn sparingly, early or late in the day; use grasses and plants that don't need a lot of watering.
6. Recycle everything.
7. Compost everything.
8. Eat more vegetables and less meat and eat organic. [I have so much to say in disagreement to this one; but it would be a post of its own.] Start a garden or join a community-supported agriculture group [those services that deliver a weekly or bi-weekly box of organic veggies to your door].
9. Carpool, ride your bike, walk or take the bus; use fuel-efficient cars when you need to drive.
10. Curb consumption.
11. Reduce pets.
12. Lose weight.

Oh lord, I can't end it on a high note after all, can I? Lose weight? His idea seems to be that if you're fat it's because you're eating more than your share, and if you cut back then naturally less will be grown, or your extra portions will somehow transport themselves to the plate of a hungry person in the third world. What's more likely is that the uneaten food will be thrown out. Ask a grocery store what happens with produce or meat left after its best-by date. (In some unscrupulous places they simply repackage the meat and stick a new sticker on it, but let's ignore that; usually, they pitch it.)

Really, it's not a terrible book; it's a lot like that list. You can read for a few pages where everything seems reasonable, but then, BAM! Some little nugget of kryptonite leaps out and smacks you in the face, leaving you slack-jawed and wondering if the whole thing is a spoof.

Posted by Andrea at 7:21 AM | Comments (6)

Frances Meets a Frog

Canadians have a reputation for never being satisfied with the weather. Well, let me tell you, in Toronto, there is good reason for it. For five or six months of the year, there's snow on the ground; spring lasts for a month, and then we are launched into summer with temperatures between 75 and 95 degrees fahrenheit (25-30C) with humidity and smog. And you know what? It stinks. It's either too cold or too hot; spring and fall seem to get shorter every year.

Bah.

So while last weekend was cold, windy and rainy, with temperatures five or six degrees below seasonal and strong north wind, this weekend has been HOT HOT HOT and humid. Today we are getting up to 29C with a humidex well over 30, and tomorrow will be 32C and gods only know how hot it will feel with the humidity. The air conditioning is on now, and I expect it will stay on until October.

I just had to get that out of the way first. Toronto Weather=CRAP.

But we have been taking advantage of the sunshine and going outside as much as we can, until smog-induced asthma, allergies and heat-induced headaches force us (me) back in. Frances loves it so it's hard to justify not going out, and man, that kid can motor in this heat like I cannot believe. She went to the park twice yesterday, once in the morning with me, and once in the afternoon with Erik, NB and NB's parents (it was already too hot for me so I stayed in the basement and recovered). Yesterday's morning walk to the park through the woodlot was great. The trilliums are now a deep fuschia or are turning brown and getting ready to go to seed; the trout lilies are long since gone, their leaves turning yellow and decaying into the inches-thick pile of moldering leaves. But the tansies, wild strawberries and Queen Anne's Lace are all raring to go, and so is a purple flower which I think is a Dame's Rocket. Which is a shame, since that means it's invasive.

And! We saw a snail, a little one not more than one inch from butt to antenae, sliming along a leaf. We stopped and said hello, of course. I think it was Frances's first live snail sighting.

Sunday morning we went again, early, before the heat could become too unbearable. We left before 11 and already were wearing shorts and t-shirts, but already, it was humid and sticky. Frances seemed not to mind and rode the swing, climbed the rock wall, went down the slides, and climbed the stairs joyfully. She would have stayed all day if we'd let her.

MAKE WITH THE FROG, ANDREA.

Right!

On the way to the park, I stopped to check out the tansies. They're not blooming yet but the flower buds are there, and turning yellow, so it won't be long. And as I leaned in, I heard a woosh. I looked down and there, blending almost perfectly into the brown maple and oak leaves, was a little brown mottled frog.

"Frances! There's a frog. Come see!"

She ran over, and I pointed to the frog, which made it jump under a flower. I moved the flower, and it jumped again, under a leaf. I moved the leaf, and it jumped onto a small log, where it stayed.

"Oooh! A frog!"

"Yeah, did you see it? A little brown frog. See, there it is still."

"Yeah."

Nothing nearly as exciting happened on the way home.

Before we went yesterday was good for wildlife too (I'm all jumbled up today. See, the heat is addling my brain already). We threw some peanuts into the back garden, and Frances ate her breakfast of bananas on her outside table, while we waited. And waited. When she was done, the squirrels started to come.

They were terrified with us sitting there on the deck stairs watching, skittering along the top of the fence and then down, climbing horizontally along its side, down into the dirt behind shrubs and leaves, to snatch a peanut and dash away. I can't understand why they were so scared. I mean, Frances only screamed at them.

"A SQUIRREL! A SQUIRREL!"

"Yes, Frances. Shhhh. You're scaring them."

"DO YOU SEE IT?"

"Yes. He's on the fence. He's coming for a peanut."

"A SQUIRREL! HE'S ON THE FENCE! HE'S COMING FOR A PEANUT! OOOOOH, A SQUIRREL!"

At one point, a blue jay (they like peanuts too) chased a small black squirrel up a very tall pine tree, trying to get the peanut out of its mouth. I thought that was unfair, considering there were still a dozen peanuts on the ground at that point, but it was entertaining to watch. We also saw goldfinches on the finchfeeder, grackles in the big birdhousefeeder, and chickadees on the squirrel-proof feeder, as well as a few robins, two Canada geese, and a beautiful black bird with red bands on its upper wings (I think it was a red-winged blackbird--what an original name!). And a cardinal.

Fortunately, they were not as intimidated by my wee girl as the squirrel was.

"FINCHES! OOOH. FINCHES! LOOK AT THEM. AWW, THEY'RE SO CUTE! DO YOU HEAR THEM SINGING? THEY'RE PRETTY! FINCHES. THEY'RE HAVING A SNACK. I LIKE THE FINCHES. THEY'RE PRETTY!"

"A CHICKADEE! A CHICKADEE! IT'S SO CUUUUUTE! DO YOU SEE IT? DO YOU SEE IT MUMMY? I SEE A CHICKADEE! IT'S SMALL. IT'S CUTE. OOOOOH!"

And my girl is so damned smart--excuse me, I do have to brag about this--that she already recognizes several birdcalls. On our way to the park, she cocked her head thoughtfully to one side, then said, "I hear seagulls," and you know what? Yep, there were seagulls, out of eyeshot, squawking away. She also recognizes blue jays and geese and doves by sound alone. This time next year she's going to be teaching me about birds, I just know it.

~~~~~

This morning (it's my compressed day) we went out to the garden to put more peanuts out for the squirrels, and underneath the hostas was another frog, mottled brown. It jumped. I decided, what the hell? So I'm 31, I'm sure I can still catch one of these suckers. It led me on a merry chase through the garden but I finally did catch it, and there it sat on my hand, quite tamely, for a minute or two while Frances went absolutely nuts. (I think it was still a baby, the tail looked vaguely tadpoleish.)

"IT'S A FROG! OOOOH MUMMY, IT'S ON YOUR HAND! WHAT A FUNNY FROG. LOOK AT THE FROG! LOOK AT THE FROG! IT'S ON YOUR HAND! IT'S A FROG! IT'S A FROG!" And seriously, that frog just sat there and took it, for about two minutes, and then it jumped away.

"CATCH IT MUMMY! CATCH THE FROG! WHAT A FUNNY FROG!"

"Maybe next time, sweetie. That was fun, though, wasn't it?"

"Yeah!"

In comparison to which the squirrel skittering around the edges of the hard, through and under the fence, waiting for us to get away from the peanuts, was almost boring.

Posted by Andrea at 8:37 AM | Comments (5)

The Green Toddler: Oh yes I did!

Andrea: When I returned home from my business trip last Thursday night, I found this sitting on the front porch.

Dear Readers: What on earth did you get from Cathy's Crawly Composters?

Andrea: Oh, you'll find out.

After much snuggling of the WBBE, BN, and supper, and drinks, and unloading of luggage, I dug out this rubbermaid, which has a few holes drilled in the top and bottom and is conveniently full of shredded newspaper. And Dear Readers, I'll have you know that that shredded newspaper is not high on Erik's happy list right now, since some of it is still deeply embedded in the shredder. Not that you need a shredder, you know; I did most of it by hand first.

Dear Readers: So what is it? Some kind of weirdo recycling bin?

Andrea: Kind of.

Then I added lots and lots of water to make the newspaper good and soggy, kind of like the way a newspaper feels if it's been left outside on the porch in the rain. It was a few small pailfulls of water; not so much that any drips came out of the holes in the bottom of the bin, but enough that it was all soggy and there were no dry paper patches. I brought it downstairs and set it up in the furnace room in the basement, and added the contents of the Mystery Box.

Dear Readers: OH MY GOD! Please tell me that you are NOT subjecting me to a photograph of many hundreds of writhing worms!

Andrea: Uh....

Dear Readers: I am never coming back! Yuck! I come here to read about FRANCES, not about your decision to set up some kind of weird hippy worm habitat in your basement.

Andrea: Umm...well, Frances does like them.

Frances: Can I hold a worm?

Frances: Can I hold another one?

Frances: Ooooh! Worms! Can I hold another worm? So cute! Look at all the worms! That is a little tiny baby worm. That is a big one! Wow. Look at all the worms. Can I hold one? Can I hold another one? Please? Please please please? Ooooooooh.

Andrea: So don't you think that if my 29" not-quite-18-lb baby girl can hold the worms that you can look at and read about them?

Dear Readers: !!!

Andrea: OK. Look. It's a worm composter.

The Town we live in keeps saying they're starting up a municipal composting green bin program sometime soon, but they've been saying that for a year now and several deadlines have already passed. I hate throwing out my food waste, considering it's like throwing out good soil; it just sits in those landfills and never rots and never does anyone any good, whereas if I compost it I can use it in my garden. Where it belongs. I don't want to get a backyard composter because there's nowhere in my backyard to set it up and if the green bin program ever gets started, I won't need a big backyard bin anymore. This way, I can have a small composter to take the edge off of the food waste, ease my guilt a bit, and have the best quality compost available anywhere to use to fertilize my plants. If the green bin program starts up, I can keep this going no problem because it's so small and the green bin can take the meat and other wastes that can't go into a worm composter anyways. Besides, Frances loves it.

Frances: Ooooh! Worms! Look at all the worms. Can I hold another one? That's a big one!

Andrea: See? So it's perfect for The Green Toddler. She never would have cared about the backyard kind, but this is small and inside--so we can use it year-round, it doesn't stop in the winter--and it's got worms, which she likes. She can help me feed the worms, so they can be kind of like pets, and the environmental benefits will be just an add-on. The worms themselves are totally harmless, they're red wigglers....

Erik: (sings) Red Wigglers! The Cadillac of Worms!

Andrea: Yes. Well. They are. It's not just an old WKRP joke. You don't want to use any kind of worm you might find in the garden as they all have different habits including different foods they will eat and a different quality of casting; red wigglers are the best for worm composting and regular earthworms are pretty terrible. Red wigglers eat any kind of fruit or veggie waste, as well as tea bags and coffee grounds, and they eat their body weight each day so if you have a half pound or pound of worms they can eat a lot of food waste. And as I've said before, worm shit is the foundation of everything. The worms stay in the bins where it's dark because they're afraid of the light and they need the moisture in the wet newspapers (which are free) in order to live. You don't have to deal with the other creepy crawlies you can get in backyard composters. They're clean and smelless systems if you run them properly (I should know, I used to do this as part of my job when I worked for a waste management department in my co-op days) and you can use one anywhere, in the kitchen or the basement or the garage, as long as it doesn't get too hot or below freezing. After about three months, I'll notice that the newspaper will be all gone and the bin will be full of gorgeous black soil and worm castings. Then, I just open the bin and turn on the overhead light. The worms burrow away from the light so I just skim of a layer of dirt, wait a few minutes, skim off another layer, wait a few more minutes, and so on--no worm touching necessary (though I personally don't have any problem worm wrangling, they're small and quite clean and they do one hell of a job). Once the dirt is gone and there's just a writhing ball of worms in the bottom, I add a new pile of soggy shredded newspapers and start adding food waste again.

They reproduce quickly so I don't need to worry about maintaining a population in my composter. In fact I only bought half a pound but I expect I'll have a full pound in a week or two.

And Frances gets to see the process of decomposition, and where dirt comes from, plus she gets to play with worms.

Frances: Oooooh! Worms! That's a baby worm. Aw, it's cute. Can I hold it?

Andrea: So really it's a win-win, for everyone but you, potentially, Dear Readers.

I promise I won't show you any more pictures of writhing masses of red wigglers for at least another three months.

Posted by Andrea at 8:26 AM | Comments (18)

The Green Toddler Welcomes You to Today's Feature Presentation

We at Beanie Baby have been busy painting stage sets, writing scripts, rehearsing and purchasing props for our new production, The Green Toddler.

During this preparation stage, we discovered that it really ought to be two shows--but more on that another day. The important thing for today is, I believe we are finally ready to go.

"What on earth are you talking about, Andrea? They're blog posts! You don't need to write scripts and paint stage sets for a blog."

Ah, normally I would agree with you. And I could have done it that way, just jumped out the front door, Frances dangling from my arm, sat her down in the woods and said, "see? Trilliums! Look at the trilliums. No, Frances. Not the stones. Not the stones. Not the stones. The trilliums! Oh, forget it. You've ruined everything!"

So I wanted to do a few things first.

Like, find some good resources for developmentally-appropriate activities for children and parents in the great oudoors. I'll share those in reviews as I go along, and if I take a snippet from a particular book or whatever, I'll let you know where I got it from.

Like, find local camping sites and cottages for rent. We won't actually be doing that yet, but sometime over the summer, hopefully.

Like, brainstorm environmentally meaningful yet fun-in-a-kiddy-way activities that Frances might want to be involved in for purely selfish reasons.

Like, look up kid's books about the non-human environment. (I know. It's a mouthful, it sounds ugly, I know. But I dislike using "nature" as a shorthand because, dammit, we're nature too.)

Like, getting her garden set up. Or at least laying the foundation. Up here in the Great White North we're advised not to put any annuals or sensitive plants outdoors until Victoria Day weekend (around May 24), but it's been a warm spring and the long-range forecast has it continuing warm until next weekend, so I went ahead and planted it anyway. I've also been trying to get her interested in my gardening activities, which involve hardier, yet fussier plants. And so with this introduction, the curtains will rise, and I will ask you to take your seats for the opening act of: The Green Toddler.

~~~~~

And yeah, it's going to sound a lot like a regular blog post.

~~~~~

Gardening

My main goal for the gardening was to demonstrate that food doesn't, ultimately, come from a store. Not in a "let's sit down and talk about the harsh realities of food production today, Frances" kind of way, but just to let her see actual food growing. Not animal food, since I don't think we're ready for that particular life lesson just yet ("Hold still, Frances; I want to chop of the chicken's head, not your hands"). So, vegetables, herbs, fruits.

Alas, my main skill when it comes to plants is to kill them in a prompt and efficient manner. So there were a few criteria for the selected plants:

1. Able to tolerate some drought (in case I forget to water).
2. Able to tolerate some acidity (because the pine needles end up everywhere).
3. Something I would actually eat (so no broccoli, no chard).

I didn't want too many, because I didn't want my black thumb responsible for the deaths of too many vegetable souls. I knew they would have to grow in containers, because the deck is the only place in the backyard we get good sun.

I got some free heritage tomato seeds from my parents, and picked up some sweetpea seeds, chive seeds (regular and garlic) and basil seeds. The tomato seeds I tried to test out with the old wet-papertowel trick, which should have been unnecessary since I saw my Dad's tomato plants growing well in his greenhouse. Alas, they did not sprout. I frowned, wondered if maybe it was too dry in there, and tried again, this time putting the seeds in potting soil well moistened in peat planting cups, and the cups inside clear plastic bags that I tied closed, to both keep the moisture in and hopefully mimic the heat-grabbing effects of a lighthouse. I haven't seen anything yet, but I think it might be too soon. If I still don't see anything in a week, I'll beg some seedlings from my parents.

The basil and chives I planted in peat pots and put outside, and watered every day. There has not even been a flicker of activity from the chives, but I do have one lonely little basil plant poking its head above the surface. That's good. Hopefully I can keep that one alive.

After three weeks of looking, on and off, I found some strawberry plants. They only came in sets of ten, and I only wanted one; so I put one in the pot I had planned, and then found spaces for the others. Frances, who was not involved in the other parts, found this fascinating. First, the roots had to be soaked for an hour; and when they had been the bucket they were in was a huge, sloppy mess of mud. Then we got to dig holes, Frances with her own wee shovel diligently picking at the hard soil in the gardens. After the hole was dug, we slopped a bit of the muddy mess into the bottom to provide some immediate moisture to the roots, put in the plants, filled the hole, and put some more of the muddy mess on top. It was great fun; plus, she got to mix the muddy mess in the bucket with her shovel, and slop it all over the rest of the garden, too. Afterwards, she helped me to water, very carefully holding the watering can and tilting while I directed the spout. She loved it and was, appropriately, a muddy mess herself by the end.

And! A week later, the strawberry plants are not only alive, but also putting out new leaves and stems. Yay for us!

Also: three pea seeds were soaked for 24 hours (which all the books say you're supposed to do) and then planted in a pot my MIL brought when they came for a visit. And look!

Pea plants!

All three!

There's hope for me yet.

Frances is not the least bit interested in the pea plants yet ("Look, Frances! Pea plants! These used to be seeds, and now see? Little baby plants. Frances? Frances? Did you see? Oh, it's time to dig the dirt up out of the garden again.") but the point isn't to get her interested so much as to expose her to the idea of food being a living thing. The downside to this is that I actually have to keep them alive.

Then I took Frances shopping with me for flowers for her very own garden. We went to Loblaws--because it's very close, and it's cheap--and picked up some marigolds, pansies, and two other kinds of plants that I wrote down but can't remember right now. She helped me mix the mud up in her "garden" and then, as I was getting ready to dig holes and plant, looked up sharply. "It's NB!" she said.

Sure enough, her little friend next door was outside and came into our backyard where they fell over and laughed, and climbed up on to the bench and laughed, and then went into his backyard and went down the slide and laughed, while I planted the flowers.

The little pots in front find a happy home later on. Don't worry about them. But this, ladies and gentlement, is Frances's flower garden.

What's that? What's the red thing?

Oh, that!

That's the Garden Elmo. He is going to sit outside in Frances's Flower Garden and watch over the plants while Frances isn't there. Why, don't you have a Garden Elmo?

Then it was time for the really, really fun stuff. Like pulling out at least one hundred tiny seedlings that sprouted from the one kind of birdseed in the mix that none of the birds will eat. I was pulling them out in handfuls five or six at a time, they were that thick in the garden. Why do they put this seed in the mix?

Like pouring out compost into the gardens and mixing it in and watering it down. Like spreading out native wildflower seeds in the front garden where we get a bit of sun (Frances helped with this too, but then negated the help by walking all over the freshly planted ground) and a few coneflower seeds from Marla. The rest have been carefully saved in my new tin (more on that later) in case the planting doesn't take.

Like cutting out the dead holly and cutting back the half-dead holly.

Like doing some soil tests from the garden centre. And good thing, too. For one, I found out that the soil in my back garden is shit. Actually, shit would be better than the soil in my back garden, because then it would have some nutrients. As it is, I have none. Good thing I put in that compost.

I also found out that the pH is neutral, which is shocking what with the pine trees. I think the pine needles must just all get raked up. That would explain why the hollies and the rhododendrons are doing so badly--they like a very acid soil, 4-5.5, and we've got around 6.5-7. Go figure. Anyway, it ought to make any planting back there much easier for me. Now I only have to worry about shade and moisture.

Like planting the two flower boxes, at least partially, with some thyme and oregano and nicotinia and some lovely violas that came home with Frances from the daycare on Thursday.

Look at that! Isn't that sweet? My Mother's Day present from Frances--now happily planted in the flower boxes. I hope we don't get a frost.

(She also got me two little board books about mummies who love their babies, which I think is one of those presents that's really more for her, but it's sweet anyway; and Erik got me a nice green tin for my seeds. It's about the size of two shoeboxes, and I only have five seed packets; so clearly I need to buy more seeds. Right? I mean, if he didn't want me to buy more seeds, why would he get me such a big seed box? I ask you.)

So that, plus the WholeMom.com stuff, pretty well took up my Mother's Day. But in a good way. We have some edibles growing, some non-edibles; Frances's garden has been planted, and she loves it. I filled up her watering can and she carefully watered her garden, then picked the Garden Elmo out to dry him off. She even picked up an old bucket and dumped its twiggy muddy waters all over my strawberry plant, that's how much she likes to water things.

What does she like best?

In Frances's own words, "Oh, it's my Garden Elmo! I love him!"

I'm not sure how this feeds into my environmental master plan, but she does like the flowers an awful lot too.

Posted by Andrea at 7:53 AM | Comments (13)