Saturday, June 28, 2008

Unplugged Project - Garden

This week's unplugged project really worked for us...we have a fantastic backyard garden. When we first got married, my husband and I worked for two full summers planting perennials, edging, and landscaping. Now we look at it from the kitchen, trying to ignore the weeds, and sometimes we walk through it, quickly chasing E, and we call it "going for a walk." We seriously needed a reminder to slow down and enjoy the flowers.

We had to keep this project fairly simple, since we only had one day at home between trips. So I brought out some vases and filled them with water, and told E that we were going to pick flowers. I brought out some cutters and the plan was to let her fill the vases in ANY way she wanted to. She loved this...it turned out she only wanted to pick one kind of flower. They were little purple geraniums with hardly any stem...but she worked very hard at getting them into the vases. She had a vision.


I handed her some other flowers, some daisies and lilies and blanket flowers, which she put in a separate vase away from her prized geraniums. All of the arrangements turned out beautifully, but my favorite one is pictured below. It is all E.

After the arrangements were done, daddy suggested we "give flowers" to the chalk people they had drawn on the patio earlier. She really loved placing the flowers in their hands...she gave two flowers to each chalk friend..."Here. You take this one." But my favorite part of this activity was watching E enjoy the garden. This is what my husband and I wanted out of life. I mean, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?

12 comments:

STRETCHING said...

Yeah, this is beautiful and it sure is nice to have our little haven in the backyard.

Love U!

Gottfredsen said...

What a beautiful spot. It looks like a peaceul place to escape to.

Dayna said...

how sweet to give some flowers to the chalk people! the bouquets are so pretty!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a really wonderful spot :) To cute about sharing the flowers with the chalk people!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! The purple flowers are a wonderful expression.

Heather said...

That last one is such a great picture, you should get it printed at least 8x10!

This Girl loves to Talk said...

I am jealous.. we live in the city... we have some hedges ??? no flowers :(

Michie said...

Great idea - looks like she had a lot of fun - maybe she's a future florist?

Anonymous said...

Your garden looks amazing! How lovely that your daughter is able to enjoy it now too. Flower arranging is a really good idea for a project. My kids would like that too, but my garden is not as healthy as yours -we have a soil deficiency that I am attempting to cure :(

I love the "chalk people" too, how cute!

Anonymous said...

How is it possible that one child could be that beautiful?

iMother2.0 said...

what a wonderful way to let her do it her way. i often struggle with showing Mia how to do things...and just sitting back and letting her figure out her own way.

Thanks for this wonderful reminder.

Bobbi & Noe said...

your children are adorable. precious pictures!

 
Header Image from Bangbouh @ Flickr