Hungry Little Sprout

When the strawberries started to ripen, I showed Lily how to pick the delicious, deep-red, ripe ones and feast on them. One berry and she was hooked. After that I showed her how to pick sugar snap peas and raspberries; she was a natural. The sugar snap peas are still growing and she checks them out every morning, chewing them into little pieces and then usually spitting the entrails out here and there throughout the yard, or trying to feed them to Dizzy.

After reading the "Zucchini" poem a gazillion times she can recognize zucchini in the garden. She points and says, "Nee nee," and tries to pull them off the vine. It's very cool to see her little mind make these connections and remember from day to day. This isn't to say that she only picks things that are edible. After all, everything goes in her mouth these days, including the mulch, the rocks and seeds from plants that are neither vegetables or fruits.

And she's fast for such a little sprout. So I'm like her shadow following her around the yard. I actually had to rip out a small bush this week that she kept honing in on. I have no idea what it was, but along with it's waxy, long oval-ish leaves, were hard, dark blue berry-like seeds. Since I didn't know what it was and couldn't let her eat the seeds, and she insisted on eating them, instead of fighting that battle over and over again, I ripped it out. Sorry small bush.

Last night she and Greg and I were playing outside, and, unprompted, she went right over to the Sun Gold cherry tomato plant, plucked the first ripe orange tomato, squished it into her mouth and said, "Myum-yum." That moment might just be worth every moment in the garden put together.