A children's garden made by children and a new years ritual.

As I sit here in the airport with a six hour lay over waiting for my connecting flight to Copenhagen,

I was delighted to "find" a password that allowed me free internet connection.

The little garden below is one that Keenan and Kaleena have been working on for a few days now, 

and when I say working I mean working.

It is funny and lovely to observe how much they still imitate the work they see around them, and how much pleasure goes into their creations, they really take it very seriously.

Kaleena claimed this particular spot as hers in the first days living on the land. 

It is a spot that gets a little morning sun but is otherwise shaded, 

and it can be seen from the kitchen window.

The only help they received was having Miguel bring the biggest trunk for the table, 

everything else they have done and they are still working on it.

Planting flowers and decorating with rocks and broken tiles that they found yesterday

is still in progress.

I am looking forward to see how it will look when I return. 

For years now we have been floating little lights on New Years eve with wishes for the coming year.

The children look forward to it, and while we have been doing it for many years,

 it is a little different each year. 

The first year we floated little walnut shells with birthday candles in the pond that

 Miguel had built in our garden in Miami.

In North Carolina we sent our little lights floating in a big bowl as we had no other water close enough.

In the Dominican Republic we floated the lights in their big pond, back in Asheville

in my sisters creek in her back yard and this year we walked through the dark woods to the cenote

with our little lights already lighted, 

sitting on little pieces of coconut shells and set them afloat with our wishes.

It was lovely, so quiet and peaceful (besides the constant chattering of Keenan)

Both Keenan and Kaleena were sure that we were all wishing for the same thing this year,

and while they were both concerned that our wishes might not come true

if we talked about it out loud, we assured them that it is 

the intention behind the wishes that matters most.

So this year we said a joint wish out loud and kept a moment of silence after.

It was beautiful and fitting, and is a lovely tradition that we all enjoy deeply.

~Blessings~

A children's garden in the making

With all the rain we have been having many projects have been halted, so we decided to get started with
one of the children's areas that we hope to create. As you can see below,  the area already had a basic tee pee structure but had otherwise been abandoned. I needed a place to plant my cucumber seedlings and the tee pee seemed a perfect place. This together with a wild climbing spinach that we had growing in a different, less ideal, location will create a lovely shaded hideout for the children. We cleared the front of the area, moved a few banana palms over that needed new location and will
eventually offer lovely fruit for the children to pick and an orange tree.
It became clear that we need to add a structure for climbing as both children enjoyed climbing the tee pee so much for the couple of days when it was under construction. We plan to clear the weeds and grasses back to the fence line and add a simple climbing structure, perhaps some tree stumps to jump between and ideally a little tree house or a simple deck. We shall see....

Look at this amazing spider that Kaleena found right in the middle of hunting time.

As we were watching, a grasshopper got stuck in her web, as you can see on the second picture, and in a few seconds it was already wrapped in the silken wrap of the spider, really amazing to watch.

~Blessings~