Ignored Dreams of Spring Flowers Blossom into Ashley’s Garden

[Editor's note: The following is a blog posting from Children's Advocate by Aimee Lewis Strain.]

By Aimee Lewis Strain 

There is a strip of dirt coming up the walkway to my house that has remained a dirt patch for nearly six years. It used to be home to three oddly growing outside fichus plants and one obnoxious daisy bush until one weekend long ago I grew ambitious and yanked them out. I was intending to replant a flower garden just as beautiful, colorful and manicured as my neighbor’s lovely front yard flower patch.

I had visions of Baby’s Breath surrounding erect tulips, light pink Snap Dragons and Gerber daisies in yellow and white. But over the years, I began to ignore my dreams of a gorgeous year-round Spring garden and soon realized I had a green eye for my neighbor’s garden, but was the missing the green thumb necessary to make it all happen.

The last lonely thing growing along my dirt patch amid just one flowering bush of unknown origin and a rose plant that produces three to five limp red roses each year was a devilish Geranium plant that had a strange left-leaning escalation about it. Another hot day and another hot attempt at beginning my garden and I yanked out the Geranium plant, unearthing a colony of earwigs that made me dizzy as I watched my dirt path sway from side to side as the nest of insects scattered in search of darkness.

I still cringe at that moment – my bare hands ripping out the plant. It was enough to never go back. From that point on, I simply ignored my dirt patch, and any improvements made to the “curb appeal” of our home looked great, despite my empty, dried out dirt patch. It was overlooked, ignored, forgotten.

But last month, my 6-year-old daughter Ashley must’ve grown frustrated with my lack of enthusiasm and drove her Power Wheels car around the neighborhood, plucking the last of the dried flowering buds summer brings to the gardens up and down our street. Unbeknownst to me, she gathered a pretty good stash – at least 10 flowers of different types and decided to dig little holes and sporadically plant her new flowers throughout our dirt patch.

When she ran out of the live flowers, Ashley went inside and cut index cards and fastened them with glue to popsicle sticks. She used colorful markers to draw different flowers on the cards and quickly ran out to her garden and stuck her handmade flowers into the dirt. She then told me her intentions to water it every day to make her garden grow.

This task took hours. Up and down the block she burgled fallen and live buds from gardens and took more time to create her own. And it was beautiful.

All afternoon I watched my daughter’s excitement rise. She believed that her garden would be full, thick and flowering by the next day.

At dinner, I watched her tell her Daddy all about her day gardening and how nice it would look when it was light out the following day. While leisurely eating her melting ice cream at dessert, Ashley made a sign that simply read: Ashley’s Garden.

I put her to bed with her eyes still aglow with pride, having accomplished a task clearly insurmountable to her mother.

With her goodnight kiss, I had an idea…

Why make the magic stop? We have a tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny – we make our kids believe that they’re good behavior and overall “performance” as little kids has made them deserved of new toys, stocking, jelly bellies, money.  Why not pronounce this great lesson in hard work? Why not let a 6-year-old believe that her hard work produced something? It’s a good lesson in how honest work yields benefits.

Knowing our beloved gardener was coming the following day, I called him that evening. I asked him if he had anyflowers that he could stick in the ground the following day to make Ashley believe her garden grew. We were in luck.

I watched nervously as the blowers moved through our lawn. I kept Ashley from looking out the window despite her pleas to go outside. I kept her at bay with TV.

Finally, she got dressed and went outside. In her reaction, there was no big celebration. No large moment with a “ta-da!” Ashley believed that her garden would grow, so there was no surprise element attached. And she was incredibly satisfied with herself in doing so. She was never challenged, so she had nothing to prove. She believed it would work and it did. Magic.

Her magic garden has done wonders to the look of our home. The ignored dirt patch is now alive with yellow and orange Marigolds, perhaps not my particular color choice, but magic sometimes comes when you have little time to prepare.

Children's Advocate is published by Action Alliance for Children, a not-for-profit organization created to address the issue of quality, affordable child care.