The Garden and Time

Our garden, watched and tended so carefully by the children, has served all season as a way to learn about the passage of time.  Watching things grow slowly (and, sometimes this summer, quickly!) has helped us to mark the passage of weeks and months and to connect past events, like planting seeds, with what we experience in the present, like growing fruits and vegetables.

The garden has so much to teach us about time.  We have watched tiny zucchinis
 become giants like the one LP is holding in this photo, and after waiting for our basil
seeds to sprout saw them become giant basil bushes!

MH monitored our broccoli and cauliflower plants closely
over the course of weeks, watching as florets appeared and grew.
He was so excited to pick them and eat them, but understood that we
were going to wait until they were "big enough to share with everyone!"

Waiting and waiting for our cherry tomatoes to grow and ripen took patience and
persistence.  We checked on them every day.

Our diligence paid off with our harvest of sweet, juicy tomatoes!

Last year, it was hard for the children to conceptualize waiting for the tomatoes
to be ready, and many green tomatoes were picked, bitten, and discarded.
This year, as two-year-olds, the children were able to better understand how to
recognize when the tomatoes were ready, and how waiting and giving time for
plants to grow could be important.

The broccoli is growing!  These two gardeners checked on this favorite food, fascinated
by how broccoli growing in the garden is like the broccoli we eat up at lunch, and how it
might be different as well.

Pumpkin plants have been especially exciting to grow from seed - a tiny seed becomes
a big plant, becomes a round, orange pumpkin - if we give it enough time.

Our big slicing tomatoes took a lot longer to ripen than the cherry
tomatoes.  Why might that be?  Why do some things take longer to
grow than others?