In a previous article I wrote about the satisfaction and joy of teaching kids how to grow vegetables from root veggies and how much fun we had learning and watching their plants grow. There’s a twist to the story which I didn’t see coming.

Our gardening experiment didn’t take up the entire afternoons while they were in my care. Always looking for constructive things for them to do instead of sitting in front of the television or worse, on a device; we learned lots of different things and had a lot of fun doing it. Seems I am painting a very sweet picture of these kids. That would be a wrong assumption, they were good kids, mostly, but they were kids and each had their moments when I was ready to pull my hair out to discipline them in a meaningful way. Meaningful in a way that they learned something from whatever trouble they managed to get into.

One day we were all outside and one of the girls, well, let’s just say she got in trouble. I was about to send her in to write a paragraph about what she did and why.  And it occurred to me that she needed something physical to do. Mostly to use up an abundance of excess energy. I marched her over to a flower bed, sat down next to her and showed her how to weed my flower bed. The weeding part was simple, but I had to show her which plants were weeds and which were not. Nothing was in bloom, so it was yet another learning opportunity.  This kid got so “into it” I had to tell her to stop when it was time for her to go home.

Over the months that followed, they all did their share of weeding my flower beds. A big help for me! And then the funniest thing happened. They started asking me if they could weed my beds! I kid you not and yes I was blown away that they had decided, collectively, that they liked to weed the beds. Of course they could weed the beds anytime! And they did, my neighbors even complimented my gardens. Who knew??

The next problem I had was what is the punishment now when they act up ? What a great problem to have!

Smith County Master Gardeners are volunteer educators certified and coordinated by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

Sharon Bayless

Smith County Master Gardener