Chilly Halloween Fun

The day after planting a slew of new seeds, I invited a bunch of preschoolers over for a Halloween playdate, and of course we ended up in the backyard (NO WALLS CAN CONTAIN US!) and of course some of my seeds got trampled, or - let us say - worked deeper into the earth. We'll see what comes of them.

But it was worth it, because we were doing an awesome Halloween spooky ice activity - frozen hands with surprises inside. Tipped off by Anne from Left Brain Craft Brain to the post at Happy Hooligans, I prepped the latex gloves at noon, dumping a large portion of liquid red food coloring in each. I got them out of the freezer at 4 PM. They were mostly frozen and in fact if they had all been entirely solid it would have taken the kids a lot longer to harvest their toys. The project's mess was all contained in the yard, where the grass was in its death throes anyway. (The red does get all over fingers and clothes - could have used a couple of those gloves for myself!)

The three-year-old kids all loved digging in their icy hands for some period time, varying by attention span, but my big first grader may have enjoyed it the most. He didn't have any parental help (because I was scurrying around distributing supplies to everyone else), and he took the longest, extracting his toys and applying salt with almost surgical precision. He told me later that it was so much fun it made everything else about the day "boring". Um, sorry?

I was too rushed to follow the Happy Hooligans suggestion about removing the gloves carefully, so we did break some fingers and the moms amused ourselves by staging them in some unused dirt a la fresh corpses. Classy. Thanks to Anne for the photos!

I'm both glad and sad nobody got a photo of the "bloody" pile of surgical gloves left at the end. Revolting!

"HEY! Do you want to get some fruit???"

That was the cry echoing up and down our block the other evening. While I love the idea of crop swaps, and there are many nice people who attend, most of them are at an awkward time for my family, right around dinnertime/bedtime. I am also ever so slightly tired of getting a small amount of a lot of produce - too little to cook with, too much to snack on.

But being the frugal person I am, I cannot stand the idea of wasting food from my yard, even - or especially (guilt) - the produce my family doesn't eat. This fruit stand idea has been percolating for a while as a way to offload some produce while working on math skills, and last week we finally were available at the right time to catch the evening commuters who walk past our house (located a block from the BART station).

The first two sales were to two discrete fellows who each bought 5 gooseberries. Huh. Then things started moving along and they sold almost everything we had available - basil, gooseberries, blackberries, and nectarines. The kids and I (lurking in the background) were outside for over an hour, and they were pretty attentive to the project for a good 45 minutes. They also made a good team, with the more outgoing little one flagging down pedestrians using her big Outside Voice, and the older one counting out the produce. They made about $4, and have been incessantly begging me to do it again ever since.

Note on the signage: My older child wrote "Fruit Stand", then absolutely refused to do the price list (summer learning loss, argh!). The younger child taped on the sequins. What a helper!

Happy Fourth of July!

Every year I organize a neighborhood sidewalk parade for kids & pets. It gets cuter and cuter every year!

Keeping Kids Busy in the Garden With You

Bubbles in a clear container, adjacent to chalk mess

It can be frustrating to get your kids outside and then have them be completely incapable of or interested in actually doing anything helpful in the garden. They often seem to have a "weeding is for chumps" attitude; while happy to water, they don't know when to say when and drown plants very quickly; when helping to sow, they scatter the seeds either a) all over creation, or b) in a tight little corner. The only thing they'll do for hours on end - more or less correctly - is pick berries. This leads to eating berries for hours on end, so if you're cool with eating unwashed fruit, it's great.

Coffee, anyone?

Now that my kindergartener is older, he is both more interested and more capable of helping, at least for short bursts. But I still have the 3 year old to manage. What works well for her are bubbles - decanted into a clear container, not in the original bottle where she can't see how much liquid is left, because she will dump it out.

We also have not one but two crummy plastic play kitchens and lots of extra tubs for cooking muddy coffee and desserts. (Not even during pretend play will she eat anything healthy.) She'll putter around with those for at least a half-hour. This usually ends up requiring a hose-down before coming inside, which is okay with me.

Getting Kids Excited About Gardening (or at least the Garden)

For my older child in particular, garden projects work best if they tie into an existing interest. For example, he remembers eating cherry tomatoes right off the plant last summer, so he was totally jazzed to plant a cherry tomato in "his area". Another example is art activities - he can't get enough of them, so when we were invited over to Left Brain Craft Brain to make seed bombs and decorate containers, we accepted with alacrity!

Just Get Outside!

That's really Step #1 to connect kids with gardening. Just get outside.
... And water shooters can be the lure.

Small Yards for Families

This Nurture Store post is inspirational - makes me realize anew what a mistake it was when my husband and I put in grass in our backyard. We thought... oh never mind. Here it is! I'm fired up to make some changes!

Flower Show Review

Why so high, "Hidden Gardens"? Good hiding place, I guess.

I am always on the lookout for special events and activities that demonstrate different facets of gardening to kids, so the idea of the Macy's Flower Show at the Union Square location caught my attention. I knew about it from its opening almost two weeks ago, but due to various illnesses and inclement weather, we didn't make it until yesterday, the day before it closed. The only available child was the toddler, so I took her - WITHOUT A STROLLER. I like to live dangerously!

Main aisle of elevated displays

Cut to the chase: I was disappointed. I had pictured something like a meandering pathway through garden vignettes. In retrospect, perhaps envisioning an indoors Butchart Gardens? Not what Macy's was dishing up. It was floral displays elevated above shopping areas, maybe

9 feet up, nothing at eye level. I had even had my girl bring her magnifying glass, thinking she could examine some exotic petals. Nope - I need to plan an excursion to the SF Botanical Gardens, I guess. At least now I know and it won't tempt me in future years!

Happily, the toddler was entertained by just wandering around Macy's.

The one display at eye level was very appealing, so well done there.

Let us all take a life tip from the toddler generation: Don't hold high expectations, take what you get as it comes, and enjoy the moment.

What You Need to Garden Successfully With Your Kids

One appeal of gardening is that the barrier to entry is very low - that is, you need a patch of dirt or a pot, and some seeds (did I mention you can buy 4 packs for a dollar at the dollar store?!) and you're good to go. However, there are of course some tools and equipment you can get for your child to have a more successful experience.

My child model demonstrating the two most important pieces of gear - clogs and shovel.

My kids both have garden clogs, and I have finally somewhat trained them to step into them the second they step outside. We do no shoes indoors, so otherwise they would be running around outside barefoot, getting their feet filthy in addition to stepping on every pointy leaf and objet out there. Garden clogs save a lot of drama. They each also have their own (because sharing is just too hard) hand trowel. For our family, those two things are the bare minimum. As they get older and more involved in the actual work - as opposed to digging holes in the rough vicinity of where I requested - I can see wanting a hand rake, gloves, and maybe even a gardening apron. (Heck, I'd like one of those.) But for now, they like getting their hands (and clothes... and faces... and....) dirty, and the feeling of helping with their own little shovels. More power to them.

Winter Gardening

Positioning the marker just so in the pot

After my last post, I fully expected to stay indoors for a couple months. Then my gaze fell on my in-box, and on the radish seeds someone gave my daughter for her November birthday. "Come on kids!" I shouted. "Let's go plant these radishes real quick!"

"Okay!" responded my 5 year old son enthusastically. "And carrots too! They're a winter crop!"

Well. Can't argue with his garden savvy or his gusto, so the three of us spent an hour in the vegetable garden this afternoon. It was in the low 60s, I'd say, a welcome respite from the recent "bitter" (by Bay Area standards) cold. We planted radishes in a pot, and in the ground cilantro, mesclun, beets, and carrots, all from seed. I pulled out my sad, sad plants formerly known as tomatoes, clicked my tongue over my peas, and weeded. Grr. Also tried to redirect some sneaky bamboo, grr x 1000.

Any excuse to practice those kindergarten writing skills

The kids spent their time messing around with the seed packets and decorating plant markers (craft sticks). That was actually a good use of their time, as opposed to having them sow the actual seeds with me, which is a great way to have your lettuce row sprout a big ol' cilantro in the middle. It will be handy to have a visual marker of what went where, since my memory is obviously deteriorating rapidly.

I think the Vitamin D did us all good. Whether we'll reap anything more tangible, time will tell.

Of COURSE you need to bring out about 50 craft sticks to choose from. All the markers too. You never know what you'll need.

Garden Chores

Watering: an unfavorite chore in the garden. Not that, come to think of it, I have a "favorite" chore. Gardening is a bunch of work sporadically punctuated with something yummy. But one of the reasons I liked the name The Undergardener for this blog is because I have so much still to learn about gardening, and none of it comes naturally to me. Didn't do it growing up, didn't even do it as an adult until moving into the first home I owned three years ago. Nothing is "in my head" - I have to schedule planting, watering, even harvesting, among all the other garden chores. Today, my to-do list includes watering, alongside make dinner, do laundry, and oh yeah, pick up the kids from school. (Phew, I remembered to do that!) It's a hot day and the kids are home, which means the plants will be quite lucky to actually get any of the water on themselves as it will be in high demand for mudpies and sprinkler-running. Because I am not going to have time (or any of us the patience) for a full hand-watering, I'll hand-water the berries and pots (basil, mint), then set the sprinkler in the main planted area. It's late afternoon, which means it may not dry fully before night... oh, jeez, better just get out there now and do it!

Pancakes on a Big Boat

What's not to like about that?

Today we took the kids to the monthly pancake breakfast at the SS Red Oak Victory, berthed at the Port of Richmond. We had never been before and had only the vaguest idea it was even there until I picked up a flyer somewhere for the event. You get a scenic (I'm not being sarcastic here - it really is, if you and your kids have any interest in boats/cars/trains/trucks) tour of the Port of Richmond. There's also a staging area to bike out there - unfortunately this is on the other side of a gap in the Bay Trail from Berkeley - for intrepid cyclists who don't mind busy city streets, it's doable.

Volunteers cook up a hearty plate of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and bonus apple slices (classy touch). Juice, "coffee", tea, and water to drink. Only $7 per person, and kids under 5 are free. We got in just under the wire with my 4 11/12th-year-old. Dining tables are set up on the main deck outside.

After eating, you get to tour the ship - a 1944 cargo vessel - on your own, but there's lots of volunteers around to answer questions. You can also buy a guided tour if your kids are old enough to do that. (Mine are so not.) It's fun to explore all the levels and little tiny rooms - including the head! - at your own pace.

Perhaps needless to say, this ship is not childproofed. What's the opposite of childproofed? Because that's pretty much what it is. However, if you are prepared to CLOSELY supervise your kids, and/or you have older kids who can be trusted not to hurl themselves over the side or miss a step on the many ladders between decks, do not miss it. We'll definitely be back next season. You can also go explore the vessel without pancakes - I guess that is a valid choice for the pancake-phobes. Check their website for the schedule.

Words to the wise:

• Sit facing away from the sun (assuming it's out) - there is no shade. Also try to sit next to the side (not the middle) so you get a better view of passing boats.
• There's a lady selling mimosas!!
• The line to send a radio message to your loved ones gets long fast, so may want to do that right at 10 when it opens.
• Be prepared for any weather - it can be windy, sunny, misty, whatever. It's the ocean.
• Sometimes they blow the ship's horn. It is loud. My toddler lost her poop and sobbed hysterically for 10 minutes.
• BYO coffee; let's leave it at that.