This article was published on Financial Times Chinese website
In my hometown, it seems that every family has a specialty. Olive’s family has a melon, TenTen’s family has a hawthorn, DuoDuo’s family doesn’t grow any vegetables, but there are a few bowl-sized moonflowers in front of their house. When I lived in Songzhuang down town, my wife planted grapes in front of the bedroom window, and the next year the grapes were small and quite sweet.
Later moved to uptown, there are begonias and grapes left by the previous owner, all under the ginkgo and acacia tree suppression, than the roses and weeds get more sunlight, belong to the yard of the “middle class”.
If you have a yard, you should garden. Last year I did three things in gardening, the first for learning about gardening, bought a small book, A Gardener’s Year. After reading a few articles and finding them interesting, I bought a dozen more to give away, and I’ve finished my own copy so far. The second thing to the ginkgo tree cut branches, so that the sun can penetrate the grapes next to the tree, by the way, to stop the wall-crawler on the ginkgo stalking. The third piece was a grapevine. After reading more than a dozen videos, I finally found the most efficient way, in the ginkgo tree next to about five meters in a small pit inserted curtain rods, take the wire in the ginkgo tree and the rod back and forth to tie a few wire, and then lead the two grape fork to the wire. This approach is with the video of the grape farm farmer uncle learned, should be all the options, the highest feasibility, optimal cost-effective one. Later a dilettante friend came and built with me.
With enough rain, the grapes grew well, and the vines climbed all over the wire shelves in one summer, and it looked pretty much like the same thing. Just a lot of spot-coated wax cicadas on the leaves, which I left unattended, leaving a problem for this year.
This spring and summer, it was common to see online videos of vegetable shortages, so I wanted to get serious about gardening. Fortunately, I had a cousin to help me. My cousin’s family are gardeners and have published a book on growing organic vegetables on the balcony. The first thing they did when they came over was to dismantle my grapevine. My cousin said the wire was strangling the ginkgo tree and might kill it. I was so scared that I was inwardly apprehensive that I would not be able to answer to the homeowner. My cousin procured metal structural parts and bamboo poles. Seven to eight, two or three weekends, we (mainly he) actually built a 3D version of the three-dimensional grapevine, so that the grapes can be higher just comfortably lie flat, enjoy the sun’s nourishment, to become the yard of the prominent class.
Then there’s gardening. Considering that the Great Famine might be coming someday, it’s good to learn the skills of being able to garden, so you can be prepared. We planted potatoes, onions, mint, etc., and pea seedlings. My cousin’s family, also daughters, and my daughter happened to plant peas together. They both had little shovels and dug holes to put the soaked peas in and then buried them. I watched from the side, thinking that children have an advantage in this kind of thing, because they are short and it is not difficult for them to squat down. At my age, squatting on the ground, digging a hole and filling it with soil, putting peas one by one, I really can’t afford it.
Getting your kids closer to plants is probably something that all parents agree on.
There are neighbors who love to climb mountains and know plants. When several families climb the mountain together, the children are quite happy to say that this is Rokudo wood and that is yellow sperm as they climb the mountain. Fruit trees are probably the most interesting plants to children, climbing up and picking fruits, as if a real-life game, both physical and mental experience. That’s why our neighbor Mr. Guo’s family has already lost their apricots.
But from what I’ve observed, kids aren’t very interested in plants. I’ve tried to take my daughter digging, pruning and weeding, and she can follow along, but definitely won’t volunteer to do it without me greeting her. She was not like that with the few small feral cats that came into the yard. She would name the cats, feed them fish bones and enjoy them every day. That said, not to mention her, if it weren’t for the influence of my cousin’s family, I wouldn’t have bothered to judge whether or not to feed them water based on the color of the leaves.
Actually, if you think about it, the stories and legends we hear about children connecting with nature tend to have a relationship with animals, especially with the zodiac and their relatives. It’s interesting to note that most of the nicknames that neighbors around us give their children are olive, potato, fruit, doodle, and so on, very plant-based.
My cousin said that gardening involves doing the same things every day, watering, weeding, etc., and the kids probably don’t like to be disciplined.
There is a lack of initiative for children to connect with plants, but in the eyes of parents and educators children’s connection with plants is at the forefront of nature education.
The history of nature education probably goes hand in hand with the development of modern education, with ideas going back to Rousseau’s pedagogically groundbreaking book, Emile, and the proliferation of ideas closely linked to the development of urban civilization in recent times.
In the 1880s and early 1900s, one of the things that caused American parents the most anxiety was how to make their children live healthier lives, as healthy as the legendary Indian children. At that time, the United States was about synonymous with rapid industrialization and urbanization. Eight million new people crowded into cities every year. Newspapers filled the cities with human innovations like the replacement of the so-and-so building by the so-and-so building as the new world’s number one skyscraper, and what revolutionary new gadgets had been invented by the technological titan Edison, roughly equivalent to Musk over 100 years ago. But the reality of daily life is that housing is getting more and more crowded, rents and house prices are rising year after year, public transportation is overcrowded, roads are messy and stinky, urban order is chaotic, crime rates are high, and the air smells funny. Rapid urbanization is like the first generation of all man-made products, with basically adequate functions and extremely poor user experience.
Cities give people greater opportunity, imagination, and connection, but they also squeeze their physical senses to an unprecedented level of confined humility.
Parents believe that living in a city with no greenery, where kids are ungrounded and housebound is tantamount to chronic suicide. They need to get their kids more connected to nature, like imagining Native Indian children. Parenting anxiety has no class, and has become a universal consensus, market demand, and social movement from top to bottom.
Thus, a popular educational program, summer camp, soon emerged. When summer vacation came, specialized counselors took children to carefully designed “man-made” wildernesses to pitch tents and live Indian-style. At the same time, the government established places like Yellowstone as national parks where city dwellers could escape from reality in a rhythmic and safe manner. Gradually, the program matured into a model, and by 1910, a specialized children’s organization, the Boy Scouts, was established. A whole suite of, standardized solutions for children’s physical training and nature education fell into place and became standard in American education.
Comparing to the United States back then, China has also experienced a wave of rapid urbanization in the last 30 years, and this urbanization is in the special form of neighborhoods. In these recent 10 years, a wave of mobile Internet has been superimposed on top of urbanization. Adults and children are trapped in buildings, in front of screens, addicted to the virtual world. All kinds of screens, big and small, are everywhere like soul-consuming spells, and adults, not to mention children, find it hard to resist their charms. People’s minds are racing through cyberspace like beasts, and their bodies are like plants planted into sofas and chairs.
Clearly, the need to connect the body to nature is as universal and urgent as it was in America a century ago.
I’m afraid that gardening-based education is well worth popularizing. Summer camps and parent-child outdoor nurturing are essentially disconnecting from everyday time and space, and while connecting children to nature, they are also disconnecting them from everyday life. That said, getting out and exploring is more like letting go.
Gardening is different, its essence is to make the space of daily life more “natural”, which is not an escape from daily life, but a reflection and improvement of daily life.
I seem to be able to understand those who enjoy gardening or horticulture in ancient and modern times. There is a thrill in creating a small ecosystem like God by decorating plants and fish ponds in one’s own space. Values, skills and ability to manage operations, and heartiness can all be present in horticulture. Green landscape is both the fruit of nature and artificially created by the owner. Through the landscape, people establish a subtle daily connection with nature. I am 100% convinced that the experience and thrill of creating a gardening ecology is absolutely no less than any other kind of business. Being able to take care of the plants on the balcony, the family has probably taken good care of their lives as well.
If I could be 20 years younger, I would like to get a bachelor’s degree in horticulture, which should be more interesting than Chinese. My cousin likes gardening now, maybe it has something to do with his father. When he was young, his father took us to the flower market. He grew up closer to flowers and plants. I am more accustomed to hiding in a pile of books to think about things, or tapping words in front of the screen, just like now.
Behind my computer is a vertical window. When the sunlight pours down, there are spiritual “raindrops” falling down. If you look closely, it’s probably pollen leaking from the wall of creepers. A swarm of bees floats between the stamens of the flowers with an indescribable sense of sanctity.
The grapes on the vine were already slightly larger than pearls, except that only half of each bunch was left, and presumably the rest had been wiped out by birds and bugs. My daughter was playing at the neighbor’s house, and I wondered if I should wait for her to come back and drag her along to wrap the bunches. Maybe even fling Olive and Size with them again. I can coax them that they can only share the grapes after they come to wrap them, I don’t know if that will work.
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