Digging in the Garden

The days have been quite long and hard in the past week with my brother in hospital (in Melbourne) after a serious motorbike accident on Wednesday. It's been difficult not being with him so the weekend was spent mostly at home to be near the phone and just to spend some quiet time reflecting, thinking about him and praying to God for his healing. Sunday afternoon we put on our hats, went into the backyard in the glorious Winter sunshine and did some gardening.

Miss M loves to much on crunchy carrot. She's like a little rabbit at times. Sometimes I put carrot with "dippy cheese" for her morning tea or she'll love it served up cooked for dinner. Her love of carrot sparked a conversation last week about where the carrots come from so we decided to buy some carrot seeds to see.

Daddy and Miss M dug up a plot for our carrots to go in and made a little path from bricks for Miss M to walk on when she waters them each day. She was quite the little helper getting bricks and helping to dig the soil but the excitement grew when the seeds were sprinkled in, covered over and she was able to get her watering can and water them all by herself.

I can't say that we have green thumbs in this house so we'll just have to see how they go...or should I say "grow". Our most beautiful plants we have are those that creep through the fence from the neighbours' gardens.

If you asked Miss M about what she found during the experience she would tell you...

• a long wriggly worm - that was a great find!
• lots and lots of ants crawling everywhere
• a cat peering over the fence
• beautiful flowers

So much to see when getting your hands dirty in the garden.

To extend the activity...

• Sing 'I Take My Shovel and I Dig Dig Dig' - Playschool
• Pretend to plant in the sandpit - add twigs and flowers
• Collect things found during the activity and glue on to card or paper (just not the cat or worm!)
• Water the plants each day
• Talk about the sun and water helping the carrots to grow

We'd like to plant something else now. Could this be the start of something big? Hmmmm....what's next?