-Otherwise titled, Why a Terrace Garden.

 My kids cracked me up and amazed me more today than many many put together. Humor, do-it-themselves-ness, and their ability to just bust-out laughing when they’d normally be more apt to bark threats (okay, our older one) and push the other, even slyly, off of the shared stool at the sink. They were not total nutballs! They were delicious, calm creatures.

Maybe it was the strawbs? (My girl’s nickname for the seedy berries. It has caught on).

They were “hunormous”(my new word!!) and itty. From a fancy market-bought set of six, to our cutie 44 from two veranda plants. It was something.

Tonight they belted out a fifteen-minute, improvisational song in the shower. It was really a cantata, a very dramatic opera to the pelts and spray of water, under which, the stars of the performance held hands the entire time. They even swayed. At one point, my 2 year old and 4 1/2 looked like they were pulling off some ballroom combinations. My girl’s hand was lightly upon her brother’s shoulder and there looked like there might be a dip.

Daughter looked up, and doing that ballroom dance-lean-back-thing, said, “I feel like I am Cinderella and he is the Prince!”

“This is the best day ever in my life”, she said, before bed. Whoa. Must be the strawbs.

They worked-out every problem themselves, and with style–no way that tired, hungry adults could do this. Maybe Childhood is learning how to deal when people grate and insult your sensibilities. Okay, maybe adulthood is also learning how to handle people and ourselves. It all worked last night.

Generally, these are awesome, well-behaved kids, but…

Normally, there might be breakdown during these fine moments and transitions:

*picking & eating all of our strawberries

*being too hungry for dinner to eat it

*arguing over kitchen stool and bathroom stool

*transitions

*the tattoos we applied

*the boy refusing dinner, attempting to walk away, food thrown, body wilted in stubborn tears

*teeth brushing

*having to exit the lovely shower

*having to walk

Tonight was MAGIC. This is the point.

They grew bigger than their years. Everything clicked. We were a house on wheels, a giant, sunshiny love-fest on the patio with juicy mouths and falling seeds. This definitely supports my view that kids need something a little wild, a little jungly, hidden, folded, waiting behind the routines. They need leafy foraging and dribbling juices. All of those science experiments we can’t seem to get off the ground. This hardly-a-strwaberry-patch is obviously yielding great results. If nothing else, it is a chance for increased oxygen outside. It is no TV for a bit, and then some gratifying red mouthfuls.

To top it off, the little boy even ate tons of carrots with dinner, and gobbled all of his fish. 

I love strawberries. From this point out, there will (always) be strawbs, and lots.

Watch me learn hydroponics. We’ll have strawbs hanging from the rafters.