I am constantly warning the kids about potential brain-rot as a result of watching too much TV. It has seemed to me for some time that their imaginations have been stunted, probably from exposure to so many expensive toys. The 6-year-old in particular is always complaining about "having nothing to do," and "needing ideas of what to draw." Her younger brother, 4, is not quite so damaged (yet); he still wanders around alone and can typically find some mindless entertainment.
Yesterday the weather was nice and both kids were home early from school. "Can I go in the backyard?" the little one asked. "Of course you can," I answered without hesitation. "That giant backyard is the whole reason we moved all the way up here in the damn suburbs. You guys are supposed to be out there all afternoon until I ring the bell to call you in for dinner. See you later!" (OK, I didn't say all that, but I thought it.) He and his sister trudged outside; I figured they'd be back in 5 minutes as usual, asking for one of us to "come play."
Surprisingly, they did not come back in 5 minutes, or 10, or 15. I watched through the giant windows as the small one made a hole in the ground with a stick, then proceeded to fill it up with small pieces of debris he had found. The older one got a "digger" (small gardening spade) from the garage and began searching for buried treasure. When I realized there was a chance I could get them to do actual yard work, I headed outside to manage the labor detail.
First off, NUMBE-RETRIEVAL. Our dog Stacy likes to poop in a specific 'region' of the large yard, which is a bonus. I made a quick pass through the minefield to pick up all the refuse. I once told my husband that when the kids were big enough, he could pay them a nickel for each numbe they retrieved: he did not find this humorous. Sometimes the kids will run around locating the numbes for pickup, but today they stayed busy with their respective digging projects.
Next, WEED-REMOVAL. The yard is just coming back to life after winter, and the weeds are first on the scene. Spotting a bunch of those clover-like weeds that stab you with their stickers, I grabbed the weed-popper from the garage to start pulling them up. If I had a real sense of "doing things right the first time," I probably would have grabbed the wheelbarrow at the same time, to dump the weed-bodies as I pulled them up. Nah. As I started popping the weeds out, I threw them back on the lawn for my little helpers to handle. Once I had quite a few piles, I yelled to the kids to get going.
The same lazy kids that won't even pick their own shoes off the floor suddenly were weed-hauling machines. They're too small to handle the wheelbarrow, so they got a fertilizer spreader from the garage and used that to collect the weeds. Each of them donned gloves to avoid the weed-spikes, and away they went! I actually witnessed some fighting about who had claiming rights to certain piles of weeds. Once I started slowing down, they ran around on search-and-destroy missions, shrieking "Here's one! Here's one!" when they found weeds I had missed on the first pass. Eventually they were saddened to realize that all the stabbing weeds were indeed gone. No more weed "fun" on this day.
My husband came out at one point to help dump the weeds from the spreader. "Guess we could make them do the fertilizer," he commented. My mind flashed forward to the day when they would be old enough to do all the yard work: mowing, weeding, edging, planting, watering...free family labor at its finest!
The kids went back to their holes, until it got late and too cool to stay outside.