A CHILD ’ S WORLD

| by Jennifer King Lindley | photos by Maria Krajcirovic

my garden is

your garden

Friendships grow alongside peas in an urban patch of dirt where kids are welcome.

My son, Ethan, stands hunched over, a light rain beading on the hood of his yellow slicker. He’s sneaker-deep in muddy earth, cupping between his hands a huge dirt-covered orb, his face etched with the concentration of a neurosurgery resident. “Hold it steady,” says Krista, a curly-haired woman in overall shorts who’s sawing away at the thick stem with a pocket knife. When it finally gives, Ethan holds the sphere triumphantly in front of his face. “Now you have a cabbage head!” she exclaims. It’s a midsummer Saturday morning, and Ethan, seven, is not at home, pleading to watch bad cartoons.

40 mothering | May–June 2010

Instead, we’re here in our local community garden, a former empty lot now dotted with sunflowers and tomato plants. We’ve been coming here all season with other gardeners, young and not so young, to wrangle cauliflow- ers, plant squash seeds, and get our hands dirty—together.

I’m shocked to see Ethan actually touch- ing a cruciferous vegetable. To say that my son doesn’t like vegetables is like saying

two positive magnets would prefer to remain apart. For the past several years, Ethan has deigned to eat Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109