Peaceful Garden, Peaceful Kids
Last week, my daughter and I went outside right after school. It was a bright, beautiful, warm March day. My daughter wanted go around to the front garden to pick up all the gnomes that were tipped over. She walked through the garden, which right now is pretty dead and flat except for a large pokeweed plant that collapsed weeks ago under the snow and now looks like a giant decaying spider coming out of the ground. She bent down slowly near the pokeweed to pick up a gnome and her hair got caught in one of the branches. After a tense five seconds, I untangled her and she relocated the gnome. She walked behind the skeletal apple tree and looked into the thawing bird bath water, carefully observing the brown leaves trapped under the melting ice. She threw a few rocks and looked up to watch the swirling birds overhead.
We made our way to the back yard and my daughter ran to the middle of the yard where she was surrounded by really tall lambsquarters, evening primrose, and decaying common milkweed plants. I left these plants up for the birds (seed heads) and for the bees (stalks to nest in).
“This is my favorite jungle,” she exclaimed!
I smiled. This is exactly what I love to hear.
Whenever we’re in the backyard I feel so lucky and incredibly blessed to be able to provide this level of nature and peace to my child amid a very noisy, angry, polluted environment. I always wonder if she will remember these moments. Will she remember that she used to talk to the plants and observe the bees and other insects from less than a foot away? Will these thoughts come into her mind when she is a worn out adult in need of comfort? That’s what I hope. I hope she will carry this little piece of wild with her forever and pass it on.
Sometimes I sit in the backyard and look around and see all the things that need to be repaired and replaced. I think of all the things that need to get done before spring, before summer, before fall, before winter, bills to pay, projects to finish, anything and everything- it never ends! The mental load weighs me down hard sometimes, so much that I literally feel myself sinking in the garden chair at times. But then a group of sparrows will fly by low, tweeting as they pass, and the seagulls will swirl around in the distance. A fat little bumble bee will whiz by and my daughter will notice a butterfly hovering by the milkweeds. There is great peace in our tiny backyard and that is priceless. We are soothed by birdsong and buzzy sounds and sunlight, and that is the shiny pearl in this ugly oyster.
My fence has been warped by huge trucks making wide turns and bumping into it. Every day there is an abundance of noise and exhaust. And my home was built about 100 years ago, so things are always breaking down, but I choose to not let all the negative aspects of this house or this neighborhood suck the magic out of this sanctuary I have created, imperfect as it may be. I recognize that it would be easier to just go with the flow and get a lawn and some shrubs and pay people to come in each week and spray chemicals and blow everything away with a leaf blower in order to make our property look more conventional, but many years ago I chose to resist that way. I chose peace. I chose nature. I chose to nurture a wild space to heal others in ways they aren’t even aware of. The myriad of strangers walking by and driving by don’t know that the greenery and flowers and birdsong in my garden are calming their nervous system and lifting their mood, but I know because I recognize the changes in me since I first saw a Monarch butterfly and understood the importance of plants. I recognize the calm it brings my child and any child that gets the chance to walk through my natural gardens. Suburban children are so far removed from nature these days. People think nature is a green lawn to run on or a visit to a local park, but nature is all around us and kids need to be taught to value it and protect it. How else can we expect to slow the mass extinction of insects and wildlife? Children (and future generations) can break the destructive patterns we’ve been living in but they need to know what’s at stake and the only way to truly know is to experience it. So let us work to create peaceful gardens and backyards by adding native plants and avoiding herbicides and pesticides. Let us value nature and encourage it, and by doing so let us create a little piece of wild for our children to remember and carry with them forever.
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