The winter months bring a new feature to the garden. Although the signs of autumn are not obvious, the pre-winter months are often a time of stagnation for most plants. There is some sign of growth in the late winter with shoots, buds and flowers. The winter is only for a month or two in this part. The sign of winter is when the dew covers the leaves a flowers at night!
The bare look of the garden during this season is in contrast to how the garden is buzzing with honey bees, butterflies and other bugs during the other seasons. They come for nectar and living on the flower petals.
It was when the gardener mentioned to me yesterday, I remembered that the aroma in the air in our front garden with the jasmines in full blossom is missing.
A garden offers a place for plants to grow and express themselves. A seed or a cutting do not tell the story of a plant in full. It is when they sprout and take roots, their fullness is bought into being.
In the garden of life, a home is central. It is in a home a child grows up to become himself or herself. During the different season of a child, the home offers the nurturing soil and affirming ambience.
A survey recently done among school going children, only thirty percent had at lest one hobby at the age of ten years. That is a disturbing news. Does it now suggest that our children are less challenged or exposed to opportunities. Have we made children conditioned to the visual media that other instincts are suppressed!
I noticed a family with their two children walking along the canal below our property. Each one had a carry bag of cloth. I noticed children and parents looking to the ground and the wall along the path and picking up something. I drew near them and watched them picking up stones, drift wood, flowers, and watching dragon flies. I felt curious and enquired about their activity.
They take a family walk of about two kilometres every week along the village roads during, which time each person picks up something of interest or observes something and have a conversation about what each person gathered or observed, on reaching home. The parents do this to increase awareness about the environment in their children who are in the middle school now. They have a weekly outing to places of interest, like science museum, beach, public garden, children's park, or climb a hill, visit a senior citizen's home and engage in activities good for children. They are now looking forward to the Cochin flower show about to start today.
The children have a dedicated corner at home where they store their collections, which is developing into a mini museum. A feather they picked up from the wayside was the beginning of their interest to spot birds in their garden. Each time they spot a bird, children draw it in their drawing book. Both children have no traction towards the visual media. As a family they watch few programmes, the weekly time spent for that being about four hours.
I found that these two parents have planned well to make their home a place of stimulus and opportunity for children to grow up exploring a wide range of interests. The outcome is both children read on their own, books of interests. Both parents take interest in reading to children at bed time.
A a home is a garden of life for children! Parents offer the formative structure for their development!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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