Home Grown Joy
Photo Credits: Hannah Filos
By Hannah Filos
For many families, hobbies, sports, chores, and school are readily built into their lifestyle. Perhaps dad has been a golfer for years, or mom has always been an avid member of a club or dance studio. For others, there is no intentional use of spare time. Some may have fallen away from old interests, or maybe family time and other interests just don’t align. When this is the case, parents or partners often feel disconnected, wishing for a way to bond with their children, spouse, or housemate. There are countless ways to reconnect and rediscover fun in your home. The one that I have found most enticing to my family is growing and studying plants.
Throughout the past 6 years of motherhood, nothing has brought more peace and joy to me than being in nature. Whether that meant going to parks, playing in our backyard, or working on a garden together, any time spent admiring plants became special to us.
Of course, when kids are young, it can feel almost pointless to try something like growing flowers or vegetables with them. Babies love to pull out potted houseplants, rip up tomato plants, and dig up your newly sown seeds. Over time, though, I've found ways to make this feel less like a failure, and more like a victory.
One of my favorite family activities is to give my kids a $1 pack of seeds and let them do anything they want with it. I’ll remind them that seeds need soil, water, and sun to grow, and then send them out with some sunflower or watermelon seeds and see what they do. Usually the seeds won’t grow–after all, kids aren’t great at following instructions. But when they do (with no help from mom) my kids feel like magicians. Even when they were barely walking and talking, I’d give them a patch of dirt to play in, some dandelions to tear up, a pile of leaves to roll around in. Within that natural space, the magic just happens. A garden, or the classic backyard, can be more than just a useful plot. It can become worlds more than the unused space that it has become for so many families. When we let go of the idea of the perfect yard or garden, our families can thrive in the natural state of things. Unraked leaves become the source of childlike fun; muddy puddles become a child's best friend; the prickly berry vines on the edge of the woods become their favorite memory.
Creating a life full of hobbies inside or outside the home can be incredibly fulfilling. Children who play sports learn teamwork. Children who game learn problem-solving skills. Teens who spend time in the gym are preparing their bodies for their future selves to use in work and life. Whatever brings the most joy to your family should be made important, and never pushed to the back burner. For my family, and I hope for some of yours, one of those great joys is growing things together. We love to see the new roots on a hydrangea cutting, the new flowers on a pumpkin plant in the yard, and the new rye grass growing in the pasture for our animals. We love to decorate our home with cacti and ferns and cut wildflowers we find in the ditches near our home. Spending time foraging blackberries and bay leaves together provides a sense of connection–to each other, and to the place we live.
Being a family that loves to garden doesn’t have to mean you spend hours each weekend tilling, planting, and sweating away in the sun. For me, it means spending time sitting with the natural landscape and finding value in that. It means letting my children do their own propagations even when their method is wrong, and allowing myself not to stress about whether or not the garden was weeded or the lawn mowed. The magic, for us, is in the art of imperfection. And imperfection in nature and gardening is where you really learn to appreciate how perfect our world is.
