Sunday, April 19, 2009

How does your garden grow?

Lately I've been a bit obsessed with self reliance. I'm the Enrichment counselor in the Relief Society presidency in our ward so have been trying to incorporate activities that will encourage the women to become more self reliant. My current baby is the beginning of a community garden. An awesome family in our ward donated a huge plot for us to use. It has been so exciting to see others buy into my vision of what this garden can do for the families in our ward. I don't have pictures of the garden, but here are some starter plants that my boys and I planted several weeks ago that will be transplanted into the community garden. It's sort of hard to see some of them. This is the first time I've tried to do starters , so we'll see how successful they are. At any rate, it's been fun for the boys to learn and help me watch and care for our "babies". In fact, Adam and I had an awesome conversion that began with an observation he had. He observed that Lincoln's flowers were growing faster than his at first, but then his caught up and seemed to be growing faster now. I mentioned briefly that people are kind of like that. In that we all grow at different speeds depending on our personalities, circumstances, talents, and abilities. Sometimes we forget to "feed" our bodies, minds, and spirits and it halts our growth for the time being and we can even begin to wilt and die. Adam thought for a moment then his eyes brightened. He said, "Yeah! Kind of like when the Lamanites and the Nephites took turns being wicked and righteous!" He understood. It prompted me to ponder about what I am doing to feed my mind, body, and spirit. How is my garden growing?





4 comments:

Karina said...

What a great teacher; what amazing students. I wish you the best with the garden :)

Maren said...

Well, I took enough pictures for all. I was more interested in photographing the people though. I will take more pictures of the garden itself as we get going.

Maria said...

Ryan is totally right there with you. What a cool idea! We are planting a big self-reliance garden in the Mecham's massive backyard and will help during the whole process so that we can all benefit from it. Ryan actually wants to go as far as having a chicken coup, but we'll see about that... That would require a whole lot more, both in checking with the city and in time taking care of the chickens!

Katie said...

What a wonderful idea. I know you've thought about it for awhile. I'm glad it's come to fruition. I miss you. You are an amazing teacher. You never miss those moments.