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My sons's gardening tools |
I have spent the last two
decades of my life running around, working a way too much, studying and trying
to do as many things as possible at the same time. When you have a child, it is
like having an additional full time job – sometimes with extra night-shifts. So,
suddenly you are forced to restructure your life completely, to set your
priorities new and – most important – to slow down.
To slow down means that you
have to stay serene as you wait for your son to take his shoes of all by
himself. It means that when you go for a walk you may need an hour for the
route that you would complete in 10 minutes if you were alone. It means that
you have to pause to admire each snail, ringworm or digger that comes your way.
It also means that you will have hard times trying to recognize the trumpet or
the fish your son is seeing in the clouds.
The great thing is that if
you get yourself into it and you let your child teach you, you may actually get
the chance to rediscover the beauty of small things in life, the things that
you normally don’t see, because you are so busy running and getting things
done. For example, never before I took the time to observe the hyper-accurate actions
of a digger, loading earth onto a truck.
So instead of hurrying to
load the second kiln this week as planned we have spent the entire day in our
garden. We had a picnic under the old apple tree; we were searching for the
latest holes on the lawn made by our hedgehog; we were checking on our berries
which need few more sunny days to ripen, we got all dirty – we had a lot of
fun.
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Hole made by a hedgehog searching for food |
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Wild strawberries |
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Comfrey |
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Peony
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