Stone Soup Row

My favorite story-book version of stone soup.

Each Wednesday at Eli's school is "soup day."  Each family contributes one vegetable to the pot, and a "stone soup" is made.  When I pick Eli up from school on Wednesdays he carries with him a rich aroma of garlic and a potpourri of melded vegetables that is just delicious.

At some point in the summer, when the vegetables were ripening and ready, and Eli had been away from school for a while, he had the idea to make a vegetable soup from the garden, like he does during the school year.  He wanted to pick some of everything and include them in the soup.  "And ONLY from the garden," he insisted.  So we did.  We picked handfuls of fresh basil, carrots, a few different summer squash, tomatoes, thyme, beets, and chard.  I appreciated Eli's enthusiasm for the project very much.  But I have to admit. . .  I was skeptical.  How would this taste?  No broth?  No seasonings?  Just a random assortment of vegetables?

It turns out, it was one of the best soups we had all summer.  (Our family has a soup day on Sundays.)  It was so fresh.  The summer squash and basil just melted in your mouth.  It needed no extra flavors.  And even I (who really dislikes beets) liked the beets, especially the golden ones, in the soup.

Today, though it is far from the ripe days of summer, I made a summer vegetable soup.  It was a cold but sunny day, and maybe part of me was remembering that wonderful day from the garden:  Eli's enthusiasm at harvesting a whole meal from the garden; my own at what a wonderful soup we all ate together.  And really, what more payoff can there be from growing a garden than this?  Joy in the harvesting and eating?  Appreciation for the flavors of the foods from our 5-year-old?

While I was chopping and reminiscing the summer soup we had, I thought of my dilemma of rows (seeTo Row or Not to Row http://getdiggy.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-row-or-not-to-row.html).  And then, it hit me.  Maybe one of my rows can be the summer soup row?  I can grow a little of everything:  basil, squash, tomato, beets and turnips, carrots, some chard.  Anything that would be good in our soup.  I like the idea.  I have grown many themed gardens before:  pizza and salsa gardens to name a few.  But a stone soup row would give credence to the many lessons Eli (and the garden) have taught me:  nature needs no embellishment; there is abundance in little; it feels really good to eat everything from the small patch we have planted.  All things to remember as I ponder my spring seeds.

To Row or Not To Row

Our first seed catalog arrived in the mail the other week.  Johnny's Seeds, which used to be a favorite when I was an unofficial farmer.  I love getting the seed catalogs and one of my favorite essays on this topic is by E.B. White, "A Report in Spring," best known for the quote:  "It really comes down to what a man wants from a plate of peas, and what peas have it in their power to give."  Each winter as the seed catalogs come in the proverbial in-box, I remember this essay and start thinking about spring planting . . . 

But I digress . . .

We had a difficult year gardening this year (as I mentioned in my previous post).  We had a lot of travel and Eli was going through a phase, so to speak.  The garden was not on his list of favorite things to do, to say the least.  It got bad enough that I avoided taking him, but since he had the summer off and I was only semi-employed, he came along.  At the end of the season I said that we would not be having a garden next year:  too much work and not enough interested hands.

This led to an interesting conversation, really a series of conversations, about  some of the things Eli did not like about the garden.  He talked about harvesting carrots at school, for example, but when I asked him if he wanted to do this at our garden, he said no (but was happy to eat them once pulled).  We do have some heavy clay and it can be hard to pull the carrots out, but it turned out that Eli wanted rows.

Rows?

I have moved away from rows.  I started using biointensive gardening practices about 15 years ago.  A friend gave me a book called the Postage Stamp Garden by Duane and Karen Newcomb (now out of print, but a great book for small gardens if you can find it).  In it, she lays out a number of wonderful small plot designs.  When implemented, you have companion plants, all nicely grouped together, with some wavy walkways in between.   Over time these ideas have become less of a garden design and more of a free-for-all.  I also am fond of the volunteer sunflowers, cosmos, and occasional mystery plants that find their way into our garden.  In addition, I've started using buckwheat as a green cover crop/mulch.  I plant it around all my summer veggie seeds, so that when the plants are just sprouting, the buckwheat covers the ground.  Then I pull the buckwheat and lay it on the ground.  I got this idea from the Seeds of Change website:  http://www.seedsofchange.com/digging/cover_crops.aspx

The Green Frenzy, 2010

The result, in my eyes, is a wonderfully green frenzy of plants.  But from Eli's perspective, it was a mess that he didn't like to walk through.  The zucchini or squashes scratched his legs.  He couldn't easily see where to step.   In short, he didn't like the mess of it all.

Also, Jeff said he avoided helping with the garden because he wasn't sure what to do. 

Eli navigating the row-less garden, 2010

So, the plan for this year is . . . .  Rows.  We decided that everyone should have their own beds.  It will be a learning process for everyone.  We all usually say what we want to grow, but this year, we'll choose what we put in our beds, and we will be responsible for planting and weeding and mulching and watering.  (With some job sharing, of course.)  It's funny.  Because in my professional life, I understand the value of everyone having a sense of ownership in the plot.  But I hadn't realized how this was lacking from the garden.  Eli will be 6 this spring, so though he can't fully plan out the succession of plants, he can do some of it, and definitely dig, weed, and water. 

So I am envisioning 6 beds (3 long beds bisected in the middle), with 4 paths lengthwise.  Wide rows, so to speak.  (With room in mine for a little mess!)

There is still a part of me learning to let go.  I just heard a little voice say:  "but what about crop rotation so that you don't get pests. . ."  And after I wrote that "what if some of the soil is bare and blows away?"  I guess I'll just have to learn to deal, or make some suggestions along the way. . .  At any rate, I hope that it will make for a better growing season.  For all of us.  Jeff will learn a bit more about gardening.  Eli will be able to pull his own carrots (his favorite garden veggie).  And I'll learn to let go a bit more and just try to enjoy it.  We'll still have plenty to harvest and many more years of growing!

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In looking for garden designs on rows, I came across this photo of lavender.  Someday Jeff, Eli, and I will bike through France.  Mustard fields and lavender.  My friend Ayesha once said she'd like to be buried in a field of lavender.  I think I'm moving in that direction myself!

Bulbs in Winter

We put the garden to rest a few months ago now.  Even though this was a bit of a rough year for gardening with Eli (he resisted going and whined a lot while there), he was sad to put the garden to rest.  He made a great stone creation out of all the rocks and flagstone we pulled out of the pathways and enjoyed spreading the leaves and straw.  Every now and then we walk our dog by the plot, just to see it resting, buried in snow and straw, bits of rich black soil poking through, waiting for spring.  Maybe this is why I love gardening the most: there is so much hope and wonder in that soil, in what it might be, in what it can produce.

This year I decided to celebrate the 12 Holy Nights.  This represents the time when the 3 Kings were traveling to see the Child of Light.  This is not a tradition I was raised with, but all of the Festivals of Light so resonate with Eli, and his need to cope with the darkness, that it feels right to bring them into our home.  Each day Eli opens a small gift that is something small for the home and family.  It has helped to diffuse the "let-down" after all the excitement of the holiday season.  (Some families rotate, so everyone gets a turn opening something, too.)  Yesterday he found a narcissus bulb waiting for him.  Eli has always loved bulbs.  Maybe it is something symbolic in laying a bulb in the ground and letting it rest through the long cold winter nights.  Maybe it is the cheerfulness of the first spring flowers.  At any rate, I didn't anticipate that he would be so excited to receive a bulb.  It didn't have all the flash of Legos or even the little Ganesh things he received earlier in the week.  But he was pleasantly pleased.  After school, I set out a cookie sheet with a pot, the bulb, a bucket of soil, a spoon, and a small pitcher of water.  He spooned soil over the bulb, very gently patting it down, then watered it and placed the pot in the window.  The green shoots are poking out of the bulb, so we should be able to watch it grow soon.  It's a great mid-winter way to connect to life!

Stream of Consiousness: Seeds, Gourds, Heirlooms, and Favas

Since I'm so amped to have planted some peas, I started trying to order other seeds for the garden.  I have used Seeds of Change out of Santa Fe for so long.  But it was a bummer this year, as it seems maybe they were hit hard by the record cold temps and state of emergency in New Mexico this winter?  Not sure, but nearly everything was unavailable.  I did order some buckwheat, as I loved planting that around all the summer veggies (squashes in particular).  But more on that later. . .

Caveman's Club Gourd

Last year we grew pumpkins and they took up a lot of our plot.  And then, actually, someone STOLE our pumpkins from the plot.  We never had the heart to tell Eli.  I ran out and bought some that looked similar and brought them home "from the garden."  But, maybe because they will be new, Eli said he didn't want to grow pumpkins this year, but is interested in gourds.  Seeds of Change has bird house and Caveman's club gourds, both of which are really excellent to grow, and when I told Eli that he could GROW a caveman's club, he just about flipped his lid!

But after ordering them, I remembered seeing something in one of my catalogs and pulled it out.  The catalog is from John Scheepers' Kitchen Garden Seeds, and it's a GEM of a catalog.  Get one!  (They also have a website at www.kitchengardenseeds.com.  The website is quite beautiful, with botanical drawings of vegetables to start your searching).  It has great varieties and choices for veggies, flowers, and. . . just what I was wanting:  a large fruited hardshell mixture.  It comes with 25 seeds including apple, baby bottle, birdhouse, martin house, cucuzzi (a Native American basket gourd), long handle dipper, maranka (the caveman's club), speckled swan (a personal favorite), and bottle.  All for $3.15 for the pack. I don't even know what they all are, but we'll find out!

Cucuzzi Gourd -- Can be grown straight if hung, or in curved form on the ground.

Gooseneck Gourd

Heirloom seeds are those that have been cultivated at small scales, usually over several generations, if not hundreds.  They provide variety, diversity, insect resistance, and are so much fun to explore.  And they usually come with great stories, too.  When I lived in Louisiana, I grew an heirloom tomato just because some grandmother in Kentucky had worked so hard to maintain the seeds.  I think this will be a good year to invest in some heirloom seeds and stories.  I know Eli will really enjoy that!  My hands-down favorite source of heirlooms is Seed Saver's Exchange:  www.seedsavers.org.  They exist to preserve garden heritage and plant diversity.  And their seeds are good quality and interesting, too.

Examples of heirlooms at Seed Saver's

Boy with Favas

Something else I want to plant soon is fava beans.  They are a great early season cover crop, a legume, providing good nitrogen to the soil, but they also are large enough that they help break up clay soil (which tends to settle over winter) so it's nice and loamy for summer plantings.  Unfortunately, Seeds of Change had a crop failure this year, but I'll find them somewhere?  Fava beans also are quite good sauteed in some olive oil with soba noodles or some other pasta.  They are popular in northern New Mexico and in Meditteranean and North African foods, too.  More on food, soon!

For a nice article on fava beans see Gardens West:

http://www.gardenswest.com/qry/page.taf?id=30&_function=atcldetail&sbtatcl_uid1=2017&_nc=b525ec3373850dda8af890bd5a74f4d6

Spring, Peas!. . . Or the start of Mommy's Happy Season

It's an early spring in Boulder, though Father Winter is sure to poke his head back up at least once more.  But we are all getting antsy for spring.  Bulbs are poking up, and we saw our first crocus blooms today.

Yet, it is still February, and there's not much to do in the garden yet, I thought.  I've walked our dog, Amber, through the community garden a few times and the winter rye and hairy vetch have endured the winter and are showing signs of waking up.  On one of these walks, I noticed some new piles of wood chips in the main paths, so on Sunday, Jeff, Eli, Amber and I went to the garden.  It was one of Eli's first opportunities to ride his new pedal bike since the fall, so he rode that, while we all trotted along, trying to keep pace (easier for Amber than the rest of us).  A few days earlier, I spied a neighbor breaking down a mongo box (some Target table purchase) and quickly swept it out of the recycling, and hauled that along to the garden, too.

Our goal for the day was to be outside, enjoying whatever there was to see in the garden, and to SHEET MULCH, which is my favorite method of preventing weeds, and is best done in early spring.

So we got a couple of pitch forks from the community garden shed and a couple of wheelbarrows to cover the huge sheet of cardboard with wood chips.  This layer of cardboard doesn't prevent the most tenacious weeds, but it definitely slows them down, a lot.  While we were shoveling the mulch into the wheelbarrows, we all discovered a blue mold, which spread moldy dust into the air each time the mulch was lifted.  This reminded Jeff that he'd seen an article recently that children who grow up on farms and are exposed to manure, molds, and everything we work so hard to remove from urban environments, actually have FEWER allergies.  This reminds me of the research I mentioned in a previous post, that there are so many beneficial bacteria in the soil, just waiting to be . . . eaten?  Well, ingested anyway. . .  I was so happy to be in the garden, that I said, "It's the start of Mommy's happy season."  I think there's really nothing I love better than growing plants, especially outside, in the sunshine and dirt.  Eli said, "me, too!"  And Amber really did bark right at that moment!


 While Jeff and I scooped mulch into the wheelbarrows, Eli ran up the woodchip pile and then jumped down.  Over and over again.  Until the wheelbarrows were ready to haul over to the garden bed (all of two-three plots away).  And then he'd jump in the wheelbarrow for a ride.  After about 2 trips, he was ready for a "train ride" around the garden, with Jeff and Eli in the first wheelbarrow as the engine, and I the caboose.  We did a tour of the whole garden and then back to the plot.  On the trip, we looked at the Hmong garden plots, which I admire, because they are very scrappy (i.e., low budget) in their use of materials, but they just feel so comfortable.  Last summer, one of the Hmong gardeners put a bunch of tree branches in the ground as bean poles.  It looked like a miniature forest of beans, and Eli was always wanting to wend his way through them.  It's an organic style of gardening that children really seem to respond to.  There's a mystery in it.  It's called "enticement" in design -- what's around the corner, what is alluded to but cannot be directly seen, offers appeal and a sense of excitement.

While we were inside the garden plot itself, we discovered at least one deer had been there over the winter, as evidenced by their POOP.  Eli was so excited, he looked around at all the rye and thought they'd probably been eating that.  He hopped from one stepping stone (loose rocks stolen from here and there) to another, and just seemed to be looking for any signs of life.  There aren't many yet, but there are a few bulbs poking up in the garden, too.  Soon, soon.

We overheard a fellow gardener several plots away shouting "The peas need to be UP by St. Patrick's Day or it gets too hot."  SCREECH.  My ears took a break to hear that again.  Time to plant peas!  Yippee!  So today when I picked Eli up from school, we took Amber and a picnic lunch to the garden and did just that.  The water isn't on in the garden yet, so I do hope for some moisture.  .  . 

Just not in the form of snow! 

The peas can probably handle it, but I don't know if I can!

Seeing with all the Senses

It’s a good time of year to start thinking about a sensory garden. These are so much fun for children of many ages. Young children delight in simple tastes, smells, colors, textures, and even sounds. As children get older, they still enjoy these sensory elements, as well as many of the simple activities these plants can be used for.

Many sensory plants are herbs and are best started in the spring, but some are perennials, which can do much better during the first summer season if they are allowed to overwinter. In the high country Zone 5, where I live, September and early October are ideal times to plant these perennials.

But first, let’s start with some ideas for what to grow in a sensory garden. I’ve starred** the plants that can be planted in the fall. If you do want to grow a sensory garden, it would be good to plan out the whole garden, growing plants with similar water requirements together, and arranging plant heights accordingly. Many sensory plants will be spring plantings, so you’ll want to leave room for them, too!

Plants for smell:

One of my son’s favorites is lemon balm (Melissa officinalis). He picks the leaves and sighs, “mmm, lemons,” with a dreamy look on his face (which is saying something, since he’s four). And then there is lavender, scented geranium, the mints (especially pineapple mint), lily of the valley** (a perennial), agastache** (licorice hyssop), and most herbs. Eli surprised me this year when he smelled the basil and then gobbled up a “basil” soup (that was largely spinach and potatoes, with fresh basil thrown in). He has never eaten it before that I can recall, and it’s an excellent example of the ownership and interest children demonstrate in eating from their own garden.

Plants for taste:

Nasturtium

Mints are good for sensory gardens. They smell and taste delicious to most, and they are hard to damage. They do tend to get weedy, so if space is limited, grow them in pots and bury the pots in the ground. This prevents the mint from spreading too much and also prevents the drying that would occur if the pots were above ground. Some good mints to try: chocolate, pineapple, orange, and peppermint. I like to plant edible flowers, including pansies, nasturtiums, petunias, violets, geraniums, and marigolds. Squash blossoms are also edible! It’s important that children understand that they shouldn’t eat flowers unless they know they are edible, but this is something that a 2 to 3 year old can master (with supervision!).

Plants for sound:

Money Plant

Money plants (Lunaria sp.) are among the most frequently listed sound plants, as the dried flowers make good shakers. I have not found them particularly easy to get established, but they are wonderful for sound and texture, as well as interesting color and shape. Another idea for sound-producing plants are small gourds that when dry can be shaken. And ornamental grasses** are good for both sound, as they blow in the wind, and touch.




Plants for texture/touch:

Bunny tails are a favorite of mine. They can tolerate some neglect and drought but also do well with frequent watering. Eli waters the bunny tails quite a lot and they’ve been content all summer long. Eli did enjoy seeing these come out and feeling the soft tails. One thing I noticed was when he did “pet” the tails, it released a lot of pollen, and potentially seed, so I am hopeful that there may be some “volunteers” in the garden next year.

In my experience, all plants are interesting for children to touch, and they will enjoy having a special place where they know it is okay to touch the plants. Amaranth is a nice plant, as its flowers are velvety to the touch,and its grain, from the Andes, is delicious and a complete protein. Jerusalem sage** also has very soft leaves. Another favorite is lamb’s ears**, as they are so soft to the touch. When Eli was 2, this was his favorite plant, and we would pluck “just one” from neighbor’s yards on our walks (we didn’t have a suitable site for them at the time). I’d rub it gently across his cheeks.

Depending on the space you have, you might also grow some plants that have other textures, such as prickly plants (cactus, coneflowers or Echinacea, hens and chicks). These plants generally grow well in full sun and require little maintenance. And indeed are prickly. I cannot recommend that you plant thistle anywhere, because it just becomes too weedy and if it’s not native, it also becomes invasive to other areas.

Snapdragon

Snapdragons are an interesting plant for touch as well. When I was three, I was both fascinated and slightly terrified by them. I spent quite a bit of the summer sticking my fingers into the snapdragons and rapidly pulling them out of the dragon’s mouth, before they could “bite.” To this day, I cannot resist the temptation to stick my finger in a snapdragon and feel the velvety, hairy insides.

Plants for sight

Goose neck gourd

Children like bright colors and interesting shapes. For color, try to plan a variety of plants based on their time of blooming, so that you have plants blooming through as much of the growing season as possible. Bulbs such as crocuses**, daffodils**, and grape hyacinth** are early bloomers and add delightful color to the doldrums of winter in many parts of the U.S. Spanish bluebells** are an interesting shape and the brilliant colors of oriental poppies are welcome spring additions. Sunflowers are a perennial children’s favorite in summer; grow some of the smaller varieties that are more accessible to children’s heights, or grow tall varieties and make a sunflower house (4-5 at about a foot spacing in a semi-circle can be tied into a little tipi shape). One of the best vegetables we have grown for the sheer joy of watching it, is the jack-o-lantern pumpkins. They get big really quickly, and it is so rewarding to watch it grow each time we return to the garden. Other gourds similarly hold a lot of interest. Some interesting gourds to grow include bird house gourds, snake gourds, ornamental “goblin” eggs, the goose (which really does look like a goose), and dinosaur gourds (also called cave man’s club, albeit small for a club). A good website for gourds is www.thegourdfather.com.

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I took a break while writing this to play with Eli outside. It’s late August, but we made an “ice castle” for his garden gnomes outside the house. I asked him what plants he liked to touch at the garden, and he said “mint, because I like to eat it.” When I asked what plants he liked to touch because of the feel he said, “lamb’s ears. . . we should plant more touch plants next year!” So, there you have it! While we were playing with his gnomes, I also thought that maybe I should add a “sixth” sense to the garden. Call it mystery, wonder, protection, but these garden gnomes hold some kind of magic and mystery for Eli. They are said to protect the garden, but I think they just make him feel good and safe.

Living without expectations

I have had two kinds of vegetable gardens:  before Eli, and after. . .

It's taken me a while to really settle into this.  Four years in fact, and I'm still working on it.  Before Eli, I double dug beds, hand-removed pests, applied mulch and compost and cover crops at all the right times, and started growing seedlings in February.  I had an ideal intensively grown vegetable garden.

Two years ago, I mentioned to a fellow gardening friend that it was taking some adjustment to gardening with Eli, and that I was learning to change my expectations.  He replied that maybe the best recipe would be to have no expectations at all.  It's taken a couple more seasons, but I have come to agree.

The irony of course is that this is the best gardening year I've had since Eli was born.  Now 4, he is able to "help" more with digging, planting, pulling weeds, and watering.  But I've learned some things along the way about what is appropriate with younger ages.

Year 1:  I was working at Collective Roots when Eli was 3 months to a year old.  I didn't take him to work often, but when I did, we spent most of the time running around in the wheelbarrow.  Then I settled in with him at a patch of the garden that needed serious weeding.  I soaked the soil and let him go to town.  He yanked and pulled and tore up that soil with his bare hands.  My only regret was the new light green knit pants we was wearing, for the last time.  But it struck me how powerful this weeding experience was for a toddler.  He could grasp the weeds, pull them out, look at the roots a bit, and toss them aside.  It's a bit like dropping a ball over and over and over again.  They start to realize the power they have over something.  (And they ingest a lot of beneficial bacteria in the process!)

Year 2:  We moved back to Santa Fe and re-joined the Milagro community garden, which I had been a part of pre-Eli.  I was working part-time and the garden was 20 minutes away.  We managed to turn the soil and work in some compost and manure.  This was my big year of adjusting expectations, and trying to get to none at all.  My biggest frustration was that Eli did not distinguish between "rows" and "paths," and he walked in many of the newly planted areas.  Eli loved the garden, especially eating fresh peas, tomatoes, and carrots from it.  And he loved to dig.  But I made the mistake of not having a designated dig spot right in the plot.  The community garden had a sand box and shade structure, but it was too far away from the plot for Eli to feel comfortable.  He was an excellent waterer, and I always made sure to bring a change of clothes for myself and him.  The garden did okay that year, but I admit it was hard for me.  It was a great success in terms of Eli's enjoyment and experience, but he drowned some plants, dug up others, and I was unable to effectively weed or maintain the garden once planted.  If I were to do that year again, I think I'd just grow fewer things, make a big dig spot, and grow cover crops or place wood chips in the paths so that he could more easily tell where he could go.

Year 3:  We started a garden, but it didn't get very far.  The drive was too far with Eli at this age, and he wasn't interested in helping nearly as much.  We abandoned ship early in the season, and I wondered how many years it would be to ever get back to it again.  I worried that my occasional (or more frequent) irritation when Eli would "destroy" the garden led to an overall dislike of gardening.

Year 4:  Imagine my surprise when Eli was delighted that we would have a garden again.  We moved (again), this time to Boulder.  The community garden is just a short walk from our house, with a creek nearby as well.  Eli and I designed the garden together.  I was determined that this year would be different (and better) than the last 2.  I decided to grow more things that Eli wanted.  Which primarily meant designating a large chunk or our plot to a pumpkin patch.  We also planted a lot more cucumber, zucchini, patty pan squash, and peas everywhere.  I created a designated digging spot for Eli as well, and am currently growing a sunflower house above the digging spot for shade and coziness.  Eli allowed me and Jeff to double dig the whole plot, but it required several wheelbarrow rides at intervals.  He also very actively helped plant in March.  But we had a late spring, and when the peas didn't sprout out of the ground with fruit 2 weeks later, Eli lost interest.  I decided to let him move away from the garden until there was more to look at.  As spring warmed to summer, there were bugs and butterflies, weeds to pull, and plants to water, and Eli showed a renewed interest in the garden.  We have a "diggingest day" once a week where we go to the garden to work.  Eli is always excited to see what there is to eat.  He "helps" water for a few minutes and then turns to his shovels and trucks in his digging spot.  Over the summer, he's dug a large hole which makes a temporary pond each time we visit.  At first I was worried about water conservation. . .  And then I thought back to my friend in Santa Fe, and how to live without expectations. . . And what the tradeoffs really were.  Eli probably uses a few extra gallons of water every time we go to the garden, but he loves being there, and I know that water conservation will only sink in if he develops that connection to the garden at all.

I also grew buckwheat this year as a cover crop and space filler.  My thinking was that I didn't know how much time I'd actually have to garden, so maybe I could just plant some warm weather cover crop in the open spaces.  They suppress weeds, draw beneficial insects to the garden, look nice, and keep me from fretting in the garden.  In the end, I like having the buckwheat so much that I didn't cut it all as my zucchinis take over, and I have scattered buckwheat poking up through the zucchini leaves.  I also created a drought tolerant wildflower spot, for similar reasons.  At some point it occurred to me that this also might help counteract the higher water use for Eli's pond.

Another thing that worked was spending time running around the community garden as a whole, just pushing the wheelbarrows.  Eli became a big "weeder," shouting "weeds" each time he encountered something on the ground and pulling it up.  Since there is mostly grass and bindweed in the paths, I just let him go to town.  We sometimes do this for a full half hour or more.  I've come to see how much it pays off to do this, as he is more eager to go to the garden to play the "weedy game" than he ever was before.  And many trips we don't end up playing it at all.  It's just the positive associations that count.

This is all a long winded way of saying that it works to live without expectations in the garden.  And doing so has allowed me to garden more, weed more, harvest more, and enjoy the process more with Eli.  I'm sure we'll go for more cycles, as Eli develops, but I am hopeful that as long as I can be open to the process, and less attached to the products, that it will be meaningful for us both.