THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 27, 1994 TAG: 9409270042
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MOMMY, I'M BORED
SOURCE: SHERRY BOYER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
WHAT STARTED as a lovely afternoon of digging in the dirt dissolved into Tom's digging alone while I chased tricycles and handed out Popsicles. So much for planting trees as a family.
But this is an activity I'm sure can work and has worked for us, making it a wonderful fall adventure. You've just got to get it together; we didn't.
Our children don't really know this, however. They had a marvelous time; practicing their jumps over the holes, riding up and down the sidewalk in a wheelbarrow, finding crickets and seeing the tiny droplets of blood on Maddie's lip where Allio backed into her with the shovel.
And so the end result is good. The children will know these trees as theirs. Allio, Maddie and Sam all use our little maple, now about 5 years old, as a dance partner, skipping around the base, hands clasped about its scrawny but sturdy trunk. They like to grasp it tightly and shake hard, waiting for the leaves to fall.
The little redbud, just 3 or 4 in age, Allio nurtures as a baby, carefully bringing the fattest caterpillars she finds to keep it company. It's like giving your child a twin, something she will grow beside and measure herself against, marveling at the differences each year will bring.
And the planting of a tree can be wonderful in itself. Sweaty, muddy adventures are always the best. This one promised as much for us. And though it wasn't everything I envisioned as a family adventure, we did have some fun together.
We started right, I think. Weeks ago, on an evening stroll, the children stopped to play with the fallen blossoms of crape myrtles, and Allio suggested we should plant one.
She studied all of the colors carefully - pink, fuchsia, purple and lavender - then settled on white.
So this past weekend, we drove to the nursery, picked up two lovely, but short and stubby, crape myrtles.
Then we drove home, where Tom and I forgot to collect the children's tools from the shed and didn't even look for their gloves. We didn't talk to them about the event; we forgot all those wonderful poems about trees we could share: ``I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. . . .''
Allio did help select the place where we would dig, and she shoveled for a while. But Maddie and Sam headed to the end of the block on their tricycles, and I gave chase. By the time we came back, the first hole was finished and Allio had skipped away with a friend. And while she did come back to comment on Tom's work (``That looks just beautiful, Dad.''), she wasn't really there.
But your planting will be different.
This is a fine time of year to plant trees, but if spring works better for you, think about timing your activity around Arbor Day, or start planning a schoolwide, spring planting activity now.
In Australia, children adopt trees on school grounds that they look after and learn about.
To give your child a tree twin, ask him or her to pick a variety of tree from the few you think would work best in the yard. Then find a tree at a nursery that is closest in age to your child or budget. Planted, this becomes your child's tree; a pet that doesn't need to be walked but one that is good for a hug and sturdy enough to hold bird feeders every winter.
Before you plant, be sure to call Miss Utility of Virginia, (800) 552-7001 to get the locations of all utility lines. They work on 48-hour notice, weekdays only, so call early in the week to have information before the weekend. Hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
KEYWORDS: SHERRIE by CNB