The Genius Ways My Father Motivated His Children to Help Him in the Garden

Gardens and children need the same things, patience, love, and someone who will never give up on them — Nicolette Sowder

My Father had the skill of making things seem like a game and have fun with us. In the Autumn, after he had finished the Autumn clearing of cutting down the dead vegetation, he would say — “alright you lot, if you build a bonfire, I’ll buy you some fireworks as a treat. There’s no need to go anywhere else, there’s plenty of branches, and stalks, around the garden. The bonfire will go really well if you rake up lots of leaves and put them on as well”.

Father was a Sergeant Major and he treated us like his regiment at times. Together with my sisters and brothers we were jumping and laughing. We all put on our Wellington Boots, went outside, and started building the bonfire. I still have images in my mind of my youngest brother, as a toddler, dragging a huge branch across the garden.

It never felt like work, it just felt like a game, we had a wonderful day clearing the garden for him, and when Firework Night finally arrived we really enjoyed the spectacle we had all created.

Then there was the time my cousin gave me a pet rabbit. The rabbit was called Geronimo, and did he have a kick! The rabbit was a lovely pet he had a 'rainbow' coloured long fur, predominantly his fur was white with splashes of grey, pale brown and pink. I've never seen a picture of a rabbit quite like him since. Dad converted a hutch for him out of a large dolls house we had been given years ago. My dad secured wire netting over the door and windows.

Once that was done, Geronimo was secure in his new home, then we walked up the garden together and he pointed out all the vegetation the rabbit would 'love to eat'. Of course, this delicious vegetation was the weeds in his vegetable patch! So every morning before school, I would walk up the garden path pulling out the weeds for the my rabbit Geronimo's breakfast, and weeding his vegetable patch for him at the same time. You could say he 'led me up the garden path'.

In the evening, I did the same thing. Sometimes the rabbit had bran, or cereal.

We all hated gooseberries, I think because mother was stingy with the sugar and they were so sour. My dad told me that if I put the rabbit droppings around the gooseberry bushes it would kill them. I was cleaning out that rabbit cage every day to kill those 'horrible gooseberries'. Of course, this didn't work and the gooseberry bushes produced even more berries because they were being 'fed'.

I hope you enjoyed this story, and I thank you for reading to ... The End.

However, my mother would never let us help her with any housework, which probably sounds wonderful to some people, but I wasn't learning anything. Mother would run herself ragged, be totally exhausted, bad tempered because she wouldn't accept any help.

My Dad thought he could never grow carrots, he always used to say that the slugs had eaten them all, when in actual fact it was my two naughty brothers, who used to pull-up the carrots, wash off the dirt in the water butt, eat the carrots and then put the tops back in the ground.

At the top of the garden we had a huge apple tree, each autumn we would pick the apples using a long pole with a 'V' cut into the end to hook the apples off the tree. As my parents had seven children, we would all stand around trying to catch the apples when they fell, like some form of game of 'Rounders'.