Yesterday I thought it was about to rain, so we stayed in the back yard instead of venturing to the park. The ducklings, naturally, were drawn to the mud pile like worms. I planted the six parsley seedlings that survived an infancy under my care, in hopes that they will do better in the open air. We also planted sunflower seeds, because sometime in your life you simply have to try planting sunflower seeds.
I showed the ducklings how to make "soup" out of various leaves and flowers from the yard; our yard is a diverse ecosystem that supplies many tasty possibilities. Then I worried about whether I play with them too much. (Yes, friends, there are no limits to the possible variations on mother guilt.) Maybe I should leave them more to develop their own creativity with undirected play. Then again, why should I have to miss out on the fun? As long as I play nice, I think I should get to play, too.
Anyway, once they had caught onto the idea (D1 is all for any activity that involves pretending to cook and eat) and I had built them a stove out of bricks, I tried redirecting myself by considering the patch of bare clay that lies at the border of our yard. It needed something growing on it; on the other hand, given my track record, it hardly seemed worthwhile to risk a plant for which I had paid good money.
All I needed was some sort of ground cover--and then I noticed the little purple flower groundcoverish weed that grows all through the yard and into any unnoticed part of the flowerbeds. The very thing. So I transplanted a dozen or so little clumps of it. If it dies, it dies. If it lives, the spot will look much less slimy and I will know it's capable of supporting life.
It did start to rain, and I took the ducklings inside and got them all cleaned up, and even gave them baths and put them in clean clothes (which I do not usually bother to do--if God meant little kids to be clean, he wouldn't have made them out of dirt), and looked outside and realized the rain had stopped as soon as we had come inside. But we really needed to do the laundry and dishes anyway. Nice weather is very bad for the housekeeping.
2 comments:
I like the comment about trying to keep the kids clean. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm letting J2 get too dirty. He likes being on the ground. He doens't care if there is carpet or not. He'll pick up, touch and try to eat anything and everything. Sometimes I feel guilty for letting him explore. I wonder if I'm too lazy in not trying to find a more sanitary form of entertainment.
But he's so happy.
And he's gotta learn.
And I can't keep him clean forever without losing my mind.
So there we have it.
My daughters think it's really special that when they were tiny I taught them all about the plants in our yard, what they could eat and what they couldn't.
We tease them now about coming in with chive breath (we would generally send them back after some mint).
What fun! :)
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