Our planned regular wild play group fell through recently due to illness… but we [all] still needed some fresh air and a change of scene, so we packed our picnic and wandered to a local park and playground. We have been there a few days in a row as both kids have been mastering a climbing structure, over the course of two days, they are both pushing themselves to tackle it from different angles and approaches, and really feeling their success. It’s exciting, but the park usually feels kind of dull, to me anyway!
There are the common exotic oaks, bark chip, lines of flaxes and other smaller native plants. All in lines, not very inspiring as far as outdoor play spaces go. The fairly standard playground equipment, slide, swings etc…. I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I was hanging out for the cup of tea and book I packed.
Then the kids started scratching about in the bark, searching for acorns and other treasures… to discover a few seedlings. The more they searched the more they found, excitedly, they looked just like the illustrations of oak seedlings we’ve been reading about in a book, and then the fun really began. Hunting for seedlings, carefully removing the bark and soil holding them in place, they collected a number of specimens to bring home.
Luna and Blake work hard on something when it captures their interest, and they tell the story of it as they go along, it is an adventure! This was a nice reminder to me that the world is still fresh and holds new discoveries for children, if I can give them space and time.
Not many seedlings survived, and I figured that they had as good a chance of surviving in the park as they did being transplanted to our place… They would have been sprayed or uprooted eventually.
I got a bit of cloud watching in too.
mermaids purse 