Planting the Alphabet

Another of Emma's favorite Lois Ehlert books is called Planting a Rainbow. In fact this book inspired a project that Emma and I undertook for two consecutive springs and summers.

The first spring/summer of our project was in 1994, the year that Emma turned two. Instead of planting a rainbow, we decided to plant the alphabet. By that I mean that we chose a plant for every letter of the alphabet. The good thing about planting the alphabet, we reasoned, was that we could include some vegetables that we would enjoy eating. We didn't have room in our yard for this project, but my mother secured us a plot in the community garden right near her house. She wanted to help out and she also knew that the garden would inspire more visits from her precious granddaughter.

We decided that, given the size of our plot, we would only be able to plant half the alphabet in our first year. We had a great time going to the garden center and picking out our seeds and seedlings. I found the list of  what we planted the first year: artichokes, beans, broccoli, cucumbers, dahlias, eggplant, four-o-clocks, garlic, horseradish, Italian parsley, jack-o-lantern (okay, we used a little creative license), kale, lettuce and marigolds.

Emma had a blast digging holes for the plants and seeds and covering them up with dirt. She got soaked helping to water the garden and when we all done she said, "Good job, Mommy." All through the rest of spring and the summer, Emma would frequently tell people about her garden and ask to visit it. Our harvest was modest, some might even say pathetic, but we were still very proud of that plot.

The next year we planted the other half of the alphabet. I couldn't find the list from that year, but I remember some of them. I know we had nasturtium for N, pumpkins for P, radishes for R and Zinnias for Z. I cannot, for the lfe of me remember how we dealt with X or Q. Our harvest was even more disappointing that year because we went away for a week in the summer and the garden suffered from the neglect. But it really wasn't the harvest that brought us the joy and satisfaction anyway. What we loved so much was the planning and the preparing and the pruning and the picking. And getting all dirty and wet was pretty fun, too!