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August 28, 2006
Park superheroes
On Saturday I had signed up Ethan and myself to spruce up Mt. Tabor - every month a group of volunteers does something to help maintain the park. He was very reluctant, but finally agreed to go since he'd get to use his new gardening gloves and his little gardening pad. The morning of, I had to convince him again, and it wasn't easy. But once we were there he was great.
He was the only kid. We had to wait a while because the park folks didn't show up to let us into the tool shed - eventually we just went to work anyway. Fortunately, there were snacks, which kept Ethan very happy.
Then we spread out along this particular watershed and started pulling up invasive plants. It was great. It was hard work, tromping in among the blackberries and all that, but fun. Ethan had his heart set on pulling out ivy, since we've talked often about how ivy is not a nice plant. It wasn't hard to find some climbing up trees, so we pulled that out. He wasn't actually much help at the pulling, but he was great at finding stuff. I sure felt proud of my little guy, for helping, and for wandering around yelling, "I found some holly, mama! Mama! Here's more morning glory!" It was very cute. Then after two hours he declared he was done with pulling up ivy - in fact, he was so tired he couldn't make it back up the hill to the car. So I carried him piggyback, and we played at the playground for a short while, until it was time to go home to lunch.
While we were walking back up the hill, we breathed in the good forest smell together.
Posted by ktingey at August 28, 2006 09:26 AM