is surely a good thing?
"Hello Cat! Look what we made!"
I stopped to look and had a muddy mound covered with twigs and leaves explained to me.
"This is where they live and this is where they have to go to get to work and when they do it like that they don't have to go in their car and it is safer than going on the bus and...."
The explanation went on and on...and on. I asked questions. There were doubts, deep thinking and some shaking of heads. Two small boys were heavily involved in make believe. A bit further away the older sister of one was picking up the last of the autumn leaves. She was examining each one carefully, rejecting some but putting others to one side. She waved to me and then wandered over.
"It's pretty good isn't it?" she told me of her younger brother's efforts. Thankfully she didn't offer suggestions for improvement. She was also a good deal cleaner than her brother but there was a leaf stuck in her hair. I left it there.
All three of them were out in the front "garden". It is currently undergoing some actual maintenance. I know the parents of the first two are hoping to turn it into something other than an ancient patch of badly maintained lawn. Right now though it is a playground.
We had that sort of thing when I was small. I think most children did. It was expected we would play outside much of the time. Gardens were designed for that as much as anything else. I don't ever remember seeing a "low maintenance" or "water saving" or some other sort of designer garden among the people we knew. People had lawns and flowers - often roses - at the front and vegetables and fruit trees at the back along with an Hills Hoist clothes line for the washing. We could tear up and down the driveway (Downunder homes having room for such things on their quarter-acre blocks) and play all sorts of imaginative games.
And we got filthy dirty. Our clothes would be covered in dirt in summer, in mud in winter. What's more our clothes were not the "fling in the machine and no ironing required" type clothing of today.
The three children I was talking to are the exception rather than the rule around here - or two of them are. I am not sure what the mother of the other small would think when she saw him. I hope she thought he had spent a productive time using his imagination. Most mothers I know would not be happy about the thought of any muddy clothes apart from those which came from sports activities an adult has organised.
Something has gone wrong somewhere. I really, really wanted to get off the trike seat and sit on the ground and get muddy and play the game of living on Mars. It would have been so much fun.
Posts
2 comments:
I hope that this will get through - the third time I have tried to leave this comment
I think back to the garden we had in Hampshire. I was able to put the chldren into their "scruffy garden jackets" and turn them out to play. They had "The undergrowth" which was a wild bit between the hedge trees and the farm fence. That was where they learned to walk among stinging nettles without getting hurt. They had the playhouse - an open sided shed with a dirt floor, and the swing - an old car tyre suspended from the older apple tree. They had the Industrial Hole - started by a dog, and enlarged by
Dinky Toy diggers and dumper trucks.
There was even a patch of clover growing among the grass, which used to put out the occasional four-leafed one.
They remember it as a sort of paradise.
There was only one rule - don't put anything in your mouth unless you have checked it with me.
All children should have that sort of garden - or access to "the bush" like we did!
Post a Comment