Miscellany and Wedding Song Link
I'm all ready for the next mother who laments to me that "my children just won't eat that." This happened again recently and I said nothing at all, and stewed over it since then till now. I won't stew in silence again.
I will ask--in a voice full of compassion and concern, of course--"Do you insist that they try a little bit every time you serve it?"
If the answer is "no," I'll say sweetly that I have found that's the best way to help children learn to like something. If it's food that is especially nutritious, I might even add that "I would not give up on this approach, even if there is strong resistance." Part of a parent's job is standing between a child and his own destructive or unhealthful tendencies. Parents do a tremendous favor to children when they teach them to like a variety of foods. Otherwise, as a child's world expands beyond the confines of his parental home, he will see closed doors all around where others see an opportunity to interact with, learn from, and serve people who have other food habits and traditions.
Shame on any mother who capitulates too easily to her child's self-important proclamations of likes and dislikes. This is not interesting trivia. This is a manifestation of immaturity and need for training.
And shame on any father whose own immaturity gives his children license to persist in theirs.
********************
Last week one day I was working outdoors when I heard a sudden bawl from a calf. The calf was out of my sight, but the cows within my range of vision reacted instantly. They left the hay feeder and the whole herd ran toward the sound.
"Why don't you go see what's wrong?" I suggested to Hiromi.
He started out, and then stopped. "They're already coming back," he said.
He was right. Within a few moments, they were back to placidly eating hay.
Today when I thought of the many needs in our church body, as in any church body, I wondered how it would look if every adult member reacted to every young person in distress as these cows did to this calf.
What if the cows had simply looked up from the hay feeder to stare at the calf as if to say That calf is so immature and so much in need of training. . . Any animal worth its feed ration knows not to tangle with an electric fence . . . .Where is that calf's mother?. . .
Not even food likes and dislikes are worthy of such dismissive behavior, let alone crises involving wrong choices of a more serious nature.
*******************
My mother, my sister-in-law, Judy, and Hiromi and I had a plant sale yesterday.
We sold some warm-season vegetable plants, but mostly annual and perennial flower plants that we had started from seed.
Selling flowers is a bittersweet experience. It's bitter because getting ready for a sale involves too many details, not all of which I managed well. It's bitter because I hate having to charge what I know I have to have to recover direct costs and have some payment for my labor. It's bitter because I know that some of the people that would love to have my flowers can not afford to buy them. It's bitter when I encounter people who do not appreciate the quality and benefits of what they are being offered, and all they look at is the price. It's bitter when there are lots of healthy-looking plants left. It's bitter when people consider only flowers that already have a bloom. They don't know that such plants often are not good transplanting candidates. Furthermore, they may have been sprayed with a growth retardant to keep them from growing too tall too fast, so that they stay marketable for a longer period of time.
"I can buy this for a dollar fifty at Lowes," I heard someone say when I told her the price on the 6-pack she was holding. She was dead wrong, and too ignorant to know it. She plunked the pack back into its tray. It's true that some kinds of flowers are available at that price in some places. Perhaps even the kind of flowers she wants are all available at that price. But the flowers I offered for sale are not available in garden centers locally--in general, at least, and the ones that are, cost far more than mine do. Believe me, if they were available locally, I would be buying them there rather than growing them myself. It would save lots of labor and hassle, and half of last month's electric bill.
The flowers I grow are cutflower types. That means that my flowers will grow tall and have strong stems. The flower form will be outstanding. For example, my Ageratums and Gomphrena and cockscomb and snapdragons are 20 inches to 4 feet tall--not 6-12 inches like the ones that are popular in the bedding plant industry. The cosmos will stand straight instead of flop, and the stems can be poked into a vase without bending. I understand that these robust specimens do not meet everyone's landscape needs, even though more of them could do so than some people seem to realize. If they have only shady places to grow flowers, I don't have much to offer. But if people want to bring lovely bouquets indoors, I have exactly what they should grow.
Mentally at least, I divide all my bouquet flowers into one of three categories: focus, line, or filler. The most attractive bouquets contain flowers or other elements from each category.
Line flowers include such flowers as Snapdragon, tall Larkspur, Veronica, Liatris, some kinds of Cockscomb, or Salvia. They consist of tiny florets that grow along a vertical spike. These give height to an arrangement, and usually go in the center of a bouquet. Other plant material can serve this purpose also. I sometimes use ornamental millet, or grasses, or silver triticale, or black ornamental wheat for this purpose.
Focus flowers include large flowers like dahlia-like zinnias, or daisy-shaped flowers like Rudbeckia (Black-eyed susans). These should be distributed fairly evenly around the base of the line flowers, with space left between them.
The filler flowers also go around the base of the line flowers and between the focus flowers. They are usually smaller flowers or greenery without flowers. Baby's breath is the common florist's filler. For this purpose I grow annuals like Ageratum, Florist's dill, Sweet Annie, Statice, Gomphrena, Cloud Larkspur, Nicotiana, and, this year, a grass variety called Frosted Explosion. People often underestimate the value of filler in a bouquet. I know I used to do so.
Hiromi is fond of saying "We don't only offer _______ (plants, in this case). We offer an education." That is perhaps the best niche for us to fill--offering plants that come with free selection and growing help, and with information on how to make good use of the final product. The sweet part of selling flowers is being able to provide something people are delighted to have found. They wear a smile when they come to pay for their selections. They talk about wanting to get home to get these planted. They make whatever decision they must, without blaming the seller if they can't afford the plants. I like these customers so much I'd like to give them all free plants.
Of course, if people do not place any value at all on pleasant indoor surroundings, and, specifically, on the instant ambiance boost that fresh flowers provide, or the sentiments that can be conveyed with a gift of flowers--If that's the case, no amount of education will help. Wal-Mart and Home Depot are made for people like that.
*********************
I don't understand why many people turn up their nose at eggplant. I conclude they must have always had poorly grown or overripe specimens, or a lack of proper parental training.
If eggplant are overripe when picked, the lovely shiny skin has begun to turn dull, and the seeds are large and numerous. Stressful growing conditions may produce oddly shaped and mealy-textured fruit with bitter compounds.
After eggplant is in the kitchen, the over ripeness can't be remedied. But the bitterness can be relieved by peeling and slicing the eggplant, then cooking it briefly in salted water. The water can be drained, and the eggplant used in various ways.
My mother cooked it till it was soft, then mashed it and mixed it with beaten eggs and crushed crackers. Next she fried it in patties, and we ate it with tomato gravy. It's still my favorite way to eat eggplant, although I like it in many other forms.
Asian eggplant (the long skinny kind) tends to be less bitter than Italian eggplant (the oval fat kind). Both Asian and Italian types come in many colors. The most common is deep purple--almost black. But white, lavender, and magenta are available too. I've even seen green and orange eggplant offered. What fun it would be to grow all these colors. I won't have green and orange this year, but I plan to grow the other colors. And I still have plants available for sale.
*******************
If you weren't at Joel and Hilda's wedding and would like to hear Hiromi sing the traditional Japanese wedding song he sang at open-mike time, you can do so at www.kbeachy.blogspot.com (I am forever having trouble with links in blog posts. This time it came live--and took me to AZT.com--three times--not the right place at all, in spite of the html code looking just right.) The date of the post is April 25. The blog is Kathy's. She is Hilda's Uncle Wilbur's wife.
Hiromi is sending the link to a relative in Japan so his mother can see him and hear his song. I think she will be really impressed.
I will ask--in a voice full of compassion and concern, of course--"Do you insist that they try a little bit every time you serve it?"
If the answer is "no," I'll say sweetly that I have found that's the best way to help children learn to like something. If it's food that is especially nutritious, I might even add that "I would not give up on this approach, even if there is strong resistance." Part of a parent's job is standing between a child and his own destructive or unhealthful tendencies. Parents do a tremendous favor to children when they teach them to like a variety of foods. Otherwise, as a child's world expands beyond the confines of his parental home, he will see closed doors all around where others see an opportunity to interact with, learn from, and serve people who have other food habits and traditions.
Shame on any mother who capitulates too easily to her child's self-important proclamations of likes and dislikes. This is not interesting trivia. This is a manifestation of immaturity and need for training.
And shame on any father whose own immaturity gives his children license to persist in theirs.
********************
Last week one day I was working outdoors when I heard a sudden bawl from a calf. The calf was out of my sight, but the cows within my range of vision reacted instantly. They left the hay feeder and the whole herd ran toward the sound.
"Why don't you go see what's wrong?" I suggested to Hiromi.
He started out, and then stopped. "They're already coming back," he said.
He was right. Within a few moments, they were back to placidly eating hay.
Today when I thought of the many needs in our church body, as in any church body, I wondered how it would look if every adult member reacted to every young person in distress as these cows did to this calf.
What if the cows had simply looked up from the hay feeder to stare at the calf as if to say That calf is so immature and so much in need of training. . . Any animal worth its feed ration knows not to tangle with an electric fence . . . .Where is that calf's mother?. . .
Not even food likes and dislikes are worthy of such dismissive behavior, let alone crises involving wrong choices of a more serious nature.
*******************
My mother, my sister-in-law, Judy, and Hiromi and I had a plant sale yesterday.
We sold some warm-season vegetable plants, but mostly annual and perennial flower plants that we had started from seed.
Selling flowers is a bittersweet experience. It's bitter because getting ready for a sale involves too many details, not all of which I managed well. It's bitter because I hate having to charge what I know I have to have to recover direct costs and have some payment for my labor. It's bitter because I know that some of the people that would love to have my flowers can not afford to buy them. It's bitter when I encounter people who do not appreciate the quality and benefits of what they are being offered, and all they look at is the price. It's bitter when there are lots of healthy-looking plants left. It's bitter when people consider only flowers that already have a bloom. They don't know that such plants often are not good transplanting candidates. Furthermore, they may have been sprayed with a growth retardant to keep them from growing too tall too fast, so that they stay marketable for a longer period of time.
"I can buy this for a dollar fifty at Lowes," I heard someone say when I told her the price on the 6-pack she was holding. She was dead wrong, and too ignorant to know it. She plunked the pack back into its tray. It's true that some kinds of flowers are available at that price in some places. Perhaps even the kind of flowers she wants are all available at that price. But the flowers I offered for sale are not available in garden centers locally--in general, at least, and the ones that are, cost far more than mine do. Believe me, if they were available locally, I would be buying them there rather than growing them myself. It would save lots of labor and hassle, and half of last month's electric bill.
The flowers I grow are cutflower types. That means that my flowers will grow tall and have strong stems. The flower form will be outstanding. For example, my Ageratums and Gomphrena and cockscomb and snapdragons are 20 inches to 4 feet tall--not 6-12 inches like the ones that are popular in the bedding plant industry. The cosmos will stand straight instead of flop, and the stems can be poked into a vase without bending. I understand that these robust specimens do not meet everyone's landscape needs, even though more of them could do so than some people seem to realize. If they have only shady places to grow flowers, I don't have much to offer. But if people want to bring lovely bouquets indoors, I have exactly what they should grow.
Mentally at least, I divide all my bouquet flowers into one of three categories: focus, line, or filler. The most attractive bouquets contain flowers or other elements from each category.
Line flowers include such flowers as Snapdragon, tall Larkspur, Veronica, Liatris, some kinds of Cockscomb, or Salvia. They consist of tiny florets that grow along a vertical spike. These give height to an arrangement, and usually go in the center of a bouquet. Other plant material can serve this purpose also. I sometimes use ornamental millet, or grasses, or silver triticale, or black ornamental wheat for this purpose.
Focus flowers include large flowers like dahlia-like zinnias, or daisy-shaped flowers like Rudbeckia (Black-eyed susans). These should be distributed fairly evenly around the base of the line flowers, with space left between them.
The filler flowers also go around the base of the line flowers and between the focus flowers. They are usually smaller flowers or greenery without flowers. Baby's breath is the common florist's filler. For this purpose I grow annuals like Ageratum, Florist's dill, Sweet Annie, Statice, Gomphrena, Cloud Larkspur, Nicotiana, and, this year, a grass variety called Frosted Explosion. People often underestimate the value of filler in a bouquet. I know I used to do so.
Hiromi is fond of saying "We don't only offer _______ (plants, in this case). We offer an education." That is perhaps the best niche for us to fill--offering plants that come with free selection and growing help, and with information on how to make good use of the final product. The sweet part of selling flowers is being able to provide something people are delighted to have found. They wear a smile when they come to pay for their selections. They talk about wanting to get home to get these planted. They make whatever decision they must, without blaming the seller if they can't afford the plants. I like these customers so much I'd like to give them all free plants.
Of course, if people do not place any value at all on pleasant indoor surroundings, and, specifically, on the instant ambiance boost that fresh flowers provide, or the sentiments that can be conveyed with a gift of flowers--If that's the case, no amount of education will help. Wal-Mart and Home Depot are made for people like that.
*********************
I don't understand why many people turn up their nose at eggplant. I conclude they must have always had poorly grown or overripe specimens, or a lack of proper parental training.
If eggplant are overripe when picked, the lovely shiny skin has begun to turn dull, and the seeds are large and numerous. Stressful growing conditions may produce oddly shaped and mealy-textured fruit with bitter compounds.
After eggplant is in the kitchen, the over ripeness can't be remedied. But the bitterness can be relieved by peeling and slicing the eggplant, then cooking it briefly in salted water. The water can be drained, and the eggplant used in various ways.
My mother cooked it till it was soft, then mashed it and mixed it with beaten eggs and crushed crackers. Next she fried it in patties, and we ate it with tomato gravy. It's still my favorite way to eat eggplant, although I like it in many other forms.
Asian eggplant (the long skinny kind) tends to be less bitter than Italian eggplant (the oval fat kind). Both Asian and Italian types come in many colors. The most common is deep purple--almost black. But white, lavender, and magenta are available too. I've even seen green and orange eggplant offered. What fun it would be to grow all these colors. I won't have green and orange this year, but I plan to grow the other colors. And I still have plants available for sale.
*******************
If you weren't at Joel and Hilda's wedding and would like to hear Hiromi sing the traditional Japanese wedding song he sang at open-mike time, you can do so at www.kbeachy.blogspot.com (I am forever having trouble with links in blog posts. This time it came live--and took me to AZT.com--three times--not the right place at all, in spite of the html code looking just right.) The date of the post is April 25. The blog is Kathy's. She is Hilda's Uncle Wilbur's wife.
Hiromi is sending the link to a relative in Japan so his mother can see him and hear his song. I think she will be really impressed.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:04 PM
1 Comments:
I fully agree with your technique on teaching your children to eat different foods.
I also wish you would write more on the subject of training children. I find so many "older" women cannot articulate child training advice very well. Or they can't remember, or they feel like they are being critical, etc. etc. I long for information on how to train my 5 year old who is full of opinions, loves to be in charge, etc. etc.
I don't think just constantly squashing his leadership ability is good, but what are some practical ways to develop this from someone who has been there, done that??? I find very few people willing to converse with me about this and it frustrates me.
By
Anonymous, at 4/27/2009
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