My 9 year old son, Toby, just finished helping me in the garden. I was pulling weeds and his job was to put them into the wheelbarrow and then dump them out for me in the area where we pile compost. We both came inside afterwards, dirty and tired but also very satisfied for having gotten so much done.
Working together with my children in the gardens has been a pastime our family has enjoyed sharing for years. There is something special about doing work together to accomplish a goal that we can all enjoy. In the gardens that goal is multi-faceted. Not only do we get to eat the foods we grow and enjoy the beauty of the flowers that adorn our yard, but our children have grown up understanding the "hows, whys and what-fors" of small things botanical.
Gardening together with children is an opportunity to observe and learn about nature. There has never been a task we have undertaken together that hasn't been interrupted because something special was discovered while in the midst of working.
Maybe it was a bumble bee gathering pollen that we paused in our work to watch. (Have you ever noticed how much pollen a bee can carry about on his legs?) Or it could have been a big juicy worm discovered when I dug down into the soil. Few kids will not be delighted by the chance to pick up and feel a long, squiggly earthworm. There are endless opportunities when you are out in the garden to put the work "on pause", to stop and, literally, smell the roses.
Toby's interest in working in the garden seldom lasts as long as mine does and, over the years, I have learned not to expect my children to keep up with my pace. He is welcome to come and go, help when he wants and wander away when he loses interest. I also don't hesitate to call him back to the garden when I discover something exciting for him look at.
Today when we were outside cleaning up the garden we found the first Spring sighting of lubber grasshoppers. Finding lubber grasshoppers has become an ominous means for our family to mark what we otherwise consider the joyful beginning of the growing season.
Why is it ominous to find a cluster of tiny black lubbers surrounding the stem and stalk of a tender young plant in the garden? Because these voracious eating machines will, within a few months, grow up to be great big 3-inch-long mega-monsters. Just one or two lubbers (and there are never just one or two lubbers) can chew big chunks of leaves off tender young plants within hours, reducing the plant to a bare shadow of its former self.
Our discovery today of juvenile lubbers clinging hopefully to the garden greenery set us into an immediate search and destroy mode. Toby ran off to find his collecting box, a plastic container with a hinged mesh top into which bugs can be deposited and observed. When he returned we both grabbed as many grasshoppers as we could and dropped them into the box. As soon as we had filled up the box we went down to the lake to feed them to the fish.
Feeding a living creature to another one of nature's beings may sound cruel to some people, but, to us, it is a lesson in and of itself. The lubbers are a garden pest. They need to be controlled somehow if we wish to grow certain plants. We don't want to use harmful chemicals or pesticides to control pests as many gardeners do, preferring instead to garden organically.
By hand collecting the grasshoppers and then emptying our booty into the lake we not only rid our garden, somewhat, of these pests but we do so in a way that contributes to the continuation of the food chain. The young lubbers must be considered a delicacy to the fish that swim in our lake because as soon as the grasshoppers bodies touch the water the fish rush up to devour them.
There are several lessons to be gleaned from this experience. I explain to my children that we don't need to eliminate all the grasshoppers that can damage our plants. It is enough to just reduce their number somewhat. This will give most of our greenery a chance to grow while still allowing many grasshoppers as well to complete their life cycle.
It is also an opportunity to explain about reproduction rates. With so many hungry predators like birds, lizards, snakes and frogs ready to devour insects, bugs tend to produce great quantities of offspring. This insures that at least some of the young will live to reach maturity.
Observing lubber grasshoppers in the garden is also a good chance to explain how insects progress from one stage of development to another.
Lubbers begin life as eggs attached to leaves which they will later eat once they have hatched out. At this stage they are called nymphs and are small black, yellow striped beings resembling their adults form.
They soon grow bigger, molting several times. With each progressive molt their color and size changes until they progress through to their final metamorphosis, the larva stage. From that point on they are full grown bright red and yellow colored grasshoppers. They are then ready to mate and begin the entire life cycle all over again.
Fish enter into the picture also. Watching bass open up their wide mouths as they whip to the surface to swallow a bug is a fascinating and thought provoking action to observe. Observing this interaction between aquatic and insect beings can lead to many thought provoking questions.
How can fish tell when something is food? Why is the movement of insects on the water important to the attraction of fish? How big a bug can a small bass eat?
While Toby and I discussed these and other questions on the shore by the lake, I couldn't help but smile. To think this whole exciting chain of events began today simply because we had been working together in the garden.
After we came inside and washed off the dirt from our hands and faces, I watched the whole day's worth of experience move one step further ahead. Toby proceeded to tell the rest of our family about what we had done, seen and discussed. A simple afternoon of pulling weeds in the garden had once again opened the door to a wondrous journey of discovery and delight.