The Little Red Hen

Last summer we visited my sister in Green Bay. She has this amazing garden that is so beautifully manicured and tended. It is a little fenced off section on the side of her house and my daughter loved opening the gate and walking up and down the rows sampling the bounty.

We talked about having a garden at our house and decided it would be a good birthday present for our daughter. So we called our friend who built us these amazing garden boxes trimmed at the top in a way that she could sit on the edge to tend to her plants.

For her birthday she received plants, seeds, gardening books, garden ornaments, and a kneeling pad. When she asked my sister what the kneeling pad was for, she was shocked to discover that weeding was a part of gardening.

On Memorial Day, she and I set out to plant the garden. I really thought she would enjoy it. And she may have, except that all the neighborhood kids had congregated in the backyard 3 houses down. While we were working on her boxes we could hear them having a great time. So after much begging, I let her join the others and I finished planting her garden.

That's when it finally occurred to me...she doesn't actually want to garden, she just wants a garden. A garden that I will plant, weed, and tend...and she will eat.

When I told this to my mother-in-law, she said there's a story about that called The Little Red Hen. I know that story. The funny thing is – so does my daughter. It's one of her favorites.