Showers to Flowers (part 1)
“Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun.”
– Kahlil Gibran
T in April of 2008
T in May of 2008
April showers brought May flowers, and summer is just around the corner, but to me it still feels like spring has only just arrived. . .
T’s been learning quite a bit about flowers this season. From the parts of a flower (petals, seeds, leaves, stem, stamen, roots, pollen) and what they need to grow (sunlight and water), to recognizing quite a few of the varieties that we see blooming all around us. T’s getting pretty good at correctly identifying many of the trees, bushes, common springtime flowers, and weeds that live in our neighborhood. Dogwood, cherry blossoms, daffodils, marigolds, roses, tulips, honeysuckle, forsythia, clovers, dandelions, clematis, buttercups, . . . her list goes on and on and grows by the day!
But with a brand new baby due in April, I decided not to even bother with an actual garden this year (even though I knew T would be all over a project like that – next year, I promise). Zia C taught us how to force tulip bulbs to bloom indoors by planting them in pebbles. So we tried it! Teaball had a blast with her project, and kept a close eye on those bulbs for a week or two. . .
They sprouted, but unfortunately never got much beyond that. I guess all the markers and paint in the world can’t make a real green thumb! I thought T would be sad about it, and she was – but not very. . . because by the time we had given up on those bulbs, our yard was showing signs of life;
The previous owners of our home must have had the greenest thumbs on the block, because we’ve lived here for 3 years now, and aside from the hosta and the clematis, we had nothing to do with any of the above pretties (except for maybe the weed)
One day while she was painting, T decided to create some blossoms of her own. She put those poster paints to work while I was in the other room, and called me in to have a look at the pretty flowers she had painted for me. Here are a couple of the pictures that she painted that afternoon;
I really like them! I love the abstractness that is the honest trademark of a 2-year old’s “all by myself” style – but I’m impressed with how flower-like they are. She did a great job – I totally see flowers. . . of course, I’m also her mom. 
Teagle didn’t stop there, either! Next time we crafted, she wanted to play with her pom-poms. . .guess what she made?
You got it! More flowers. . . and then she made a cute couple of pom-pom caterpillars.
But they needed somewhere to live, so we turned the green construction paper they were glued to into leaves. When she woke up the next morning, she told me that she wanted to make a GIANT flower for said leaves to belong to. So, using some Styrofoam plates that we found in the eaves of our attic (prolly from 1974 – again, three cheers for the previous occupants of our home), she did!
The end product was bigger than tiny T, and I should have taken a pic of the two side-by-side, but didn’t. . . A pony bead mouth and a tissue paper stem completed T’s project, and gave her little caterpillars a new home on her wall of creation!
Huginn, Muninn, and me 