Welcome To My Garden
The debate with the kids about the pet dog continues, every now and then I am branded as heartless, promise breaker only to be in the good books after a couple of hugs. I loose and gain the title of best and worst father in world in same weekend. This led me to discovery of Prasad Principle of affection from kids: It goes like this:
“The sweetness of your kids towards you is directly proportional to the amount of chocolates you bought on the last trip, provided the promise to look into getting a pet is kept constant, to be revisited some time in future”.
Ok, my principle may never win me a noble prize or make me famous like Newton, but it gives peace in our house a fair chance.
Some of you may remember S and V about whom I have written in a post earlier as they were struggling to decide whether to be parents or not. I remembered my conversation with S and him mentioning that they are not sure of taking responsibility of taking care of a kid. Hence they started with plants and then moved to a pet dog, just to test if they are capable of being responsible for a living thing.
This led to my creative juices overflowing, and I had to collect them in a jug to water the plants. While I was watering the plants the elder one came and wanted to know the name of the flowers in the pot. Now most of the plants I grow are cacti but we do have some pots of common house plants like Tulsi, money plant, etc. in the balcony. My instructions to the kids are to not touch the plants or water them as I personally look after them. But this was an exceptional day.
I asked the elder one if she would like few pots of her own.
“Yes, but I don’t want any cacti and you will not touch them”. She responded.
“No problem”, I said, “why don’t we start a herb garden for you for your school project? This way you will have your own pots and you can take them for your school project also?” Sensing a conspiracy hatching between her elder sister and father the younger one joined us in balcony. On learning that the elder one is getting her own pots, she too wanted a piece of action in our little 5 ft by 9 ft balcony.
Now began the debate on what to grow, as the elder one had to carry one pot to school after summer vacation we got 3 small 5 inch plastic pots for her and planted some mint stems in two and in third one a sapling of Aloe Vera. The younger one wanted to grow her favourite tomatoes and we jointly prepared the two 9” earthen pots for her.
It is amazing to see how much difference just 5 small pots in a balcony can make. Every day, the moment the kids get up, they rush to balcony to check the growth of the plants and water them. The elder one has even enlisted an old Barbie to scare birds away. The demand for the pet is slowly becoming less frequent and their interest in gardening is growing day by day. I am pleasantly surprised at the responsibility the kids have taken for their pots, learning about so many things like germination, water, rains, seasons, pests, etc. in the process.
The side effects?
Fresh mint leaves. And I am sure in next few weeks we will harvest fresh tomatoes from our two little pots. The Aloe Vera leaves are being used by missus for some kind of paste she applies on my face every once in a while (poor women, she still believes in the fairy tale of the frog converting into prince charming).
Oh! by the way I never shared with you dear reader that S and V became parents of a beautiful little girl of their own in January, and they are loving every moment of it.
Sasha and Prasad Np are proud parents of 2 girls whom they fondly call Princess and Pinkette. He wears many hats after taking a break from being corner office critter for a long time. He is now an entrepreneur, blogger, photographer, traveler and a potential investor in start-ups with unique concepts especially if they are in travel related business. He blogs at Desi Traveler, and can be reached at Facebook and Twitter.