Gardens

For the past couple of weeks, we've inadvertently stumbled on several books about gardens, of which our favorite so far is The Curious Garden by Peter Brown; it's a stunningly beautiful book about a little boy, Liam, who discovers a patch of flowers on top of an abandoned railway in the midst of a dreary city devoid of any greenery. Liam begins to cultivate the railway garden, and in the course of time he manages to expand it beyond the railway, transforming the entire city from gray to green. Even though the language is a bit complex for Sava, he seems to have taken to the book, and he especially loves the part where plants begin to appear in unexpected places, such as on a stop sign and around a fire hydrant--his face lights up whenever he turns that page. Two other books that he also enjoys are How My Garden Grew and Growing Like Me, both by Anne Rockwell, who appears to have written on every topic interesting to preschoolers.
Sava loves "watering" the flowers in our little backyard, and I had for a while thought of getting some plants for us to grow. Yesterday we finally made the trip to a lovely little store, Common Ground, in PA, where at the end of an hour we left with six big pots, three huge bags of potting soil, a book about growing food in "containers," and two stalks of tomatoes, six heads of lettuce, six strawberry plants and a few herbs. We planted those when we got home, and in the early evening Sava proudly began to water them. After a childhood spent with grandparents who pretty much grew everything we ate, I am mortified to know so little about growing food. I probably recognize more fruit and vegetable plants than the average American, but I am clueless when it comes to planting and cultivating. So, as of yesterday, this appears to be my new passion: the book the store assistant recommended is a bible of sorts for growing plants in confined spaces, and I read it with genuine interest this morning, while pretending not to pay attention to Sava's attempts to get adjusted to morning preschool at Children's Corner. We just started the morning program last week, and while the first day went reasonably well, the second, today, was a bit of a disaster. He would not let me go outside to "work," and when I did finally leave him flailing in the hands of one teacher, he screamed hysterically for at least ten minutes. He then calmed down for three quarters of an hour, after which time I had to go in again, since he seemed to have trouble with the "transition" from play to snack. After that, I spent two hours reading while he happily (mostly) played around me, even singing to himself a couple of times. My heart aches that he finds it so hard to adapt to this environment, since at the end of the day he really enjoys the play and I am sure learns much from observing other children.