Today, LW spotted corn on the cover of a book and excitedly showed it to me. We had just harvested and cooked some okra because N expressed that she wanted to eat okra while in the garden (we ended up having to buy some okra from a shop, but that is another story!). I asked if there was okra in the book and there was!
So we read this book, ‘Up, Down, and Around’ by Katherine Ayres during storytime. I have read this book with other groups of children several times but today was different. Very different. For the first time, as we read the book, our group had a deep connection to the book because of our experiences in the garden.
As we looked at the illustrations and listened to the words, we were excited by the parallels that we could draw to our own experiences in the garden. LW and I had just this morning been admiring the curly vines of the mini cucumber plant. We had been busy observing, weeding and watering the 3 sisters that we planted 2 weeks ago (corn, long beans and pumpkin), and all 3 sisters appeared inside the book.
Our hearts are stirred by our experiences being shared and expressed in a book…… could such a wonderful thing happen to us if our lives had not been intertwined with the lives of our more-than-human companions in the garden?
Blessings on the garden. Our gratitude to our more-than-human companions for nurturing our bodies and souls. May we learn to be good sisters and brothers to them in return.
