I love to visit clever gardens. I find them more refreshing than art museums, and as inspiring as yarn and fabric shops. I come home with tired legs from exercise, pink cheeks from the sun, new Latin names to mangle when I talk gardening, and the satisfaction of seeing plants I’d only seen in catalogs: its almost like meeting a famous person. Some of my favorites are
The Chicago Botanic Garden
Craig Bergmann’s Country Garden
Tranquil Lake
My sons have learned that gardens are full of paths to explore, which means running around, and maps. They readily admit to loving motion and maps.
Usually, after a lot of looking around, they also enjoy the flowers, but each time we plan another visit, it’s not a feature that gets them enthused.
Baby K has not yet expressed her opinion.
Sunday night, M groused to me that it would be a boring field trip day, a waste of a field trip. I took a deep breath, and was prepared to say something regretable, when DH began to tell him about the fish in the koy pond, the long walk by the bay, and the California Redwood, growing in Rhode Island of all places. To follow up on that, I made sure it was a true field trip day by making honey milk balls out of the More with Less cookbook for our picnic, and borrowing some Jim Weiss CDs from the library. Car CDs and cookies are important for Field Trip Days, especially ones that are more for me than for them.
When we met my friend S at Blithewold with her son, my boys were primed to have a good time. I was afraid we’d be late, so we were an hour early. We pulled out our prisma pencils and good paper and sketched a daffodil while I read to them the questions out of the "Handbook of Nature Study." We had only just started when she arrived, she wasn’t late either.
Field trips are so much easier with more adults, even if the child/adult ratio is constant from home. There is even the potential to use the bathroom alone if the other adult minds the combined children: now that’s a luxury. S is an especially nice adult to have along because she is always prepared : when my camera ran out of batteries, she had extra. When it turned out my memory card got left at my mother’s house, she had extras. When we were complemented on the behavior of our children and asked if we were sisters, she told the strangers we were Christian Sisters and gave God the glory for the children’s behavior. Me, I would have stammered. I like "Christian Sisters," we sound like a singing group.
We walked the whole garden twice. B had the map, his goal was completeness, we’d never seen the dock. As the dock is not planted in flowers or shrubs, I was more interested in the greenhouse, but we’d never seen the greenhouse either, so B the map keeper made sure we got there too.
The littlest boys liked the wild spaces with water best, the shore of the bay, the pond edge in the Japanese garden. K slept in her Ellaroo.
Little J and M wanted to throw rocks into the bay and hear the splash. M fell into the koy pond. When we were near the formally planted sections, they had trouble figuring out what was path and what was decorative rock with planted space beside it. Note to self: formal gardens can be easier on small kids than informally planted ones because the where-you-can-run-part stands out from the where-you-can’t-run part.
The other garden visitors tended to be retirement aged folks, mostly women with gardening interest, and men with photographic interests. The married couples all featured either romantic/indulgent husbands or photographically inclined husbands. The lenses on those cameras looked like money to me. Yet, this crowd was so accepting of the active boys! When M fell in the pond, one group of ladies collectively sighed and said, "Oh, that pond must feel like a real pond now, not like something on display." The photographically minded gentleman wished he’d captured the moment. Then the ladies asked if we homeschooled and encouraged us to keep up with it. See why I love gardens?
Sounds like a wonderful day! Maybe someday God will change our geography and WE can be the ones meeting in a garden.
Blessings,
Annie
Wow! Sounds great!!! :)
Just popping in from the CM nature group and I really enjoyed reading your blog entry about your garden walks and adventures.
It looks like everyone had a great time.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom