Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Seed bombs

My son recently received mail from OERRR, an initiative by Natuurmonumenten (Nature Preservation) to get children to explore nature. In the envelope were some new outdoor discovery cards and a package containing zaadbommetjes (seed bombs). He got really excited at the word 'bombs' but was disappointed when I told him the package would not explode when opened. The idea of making his own seed bombs became much more appealing when he realized that sand, clay and water would be involved. Since we did not have clay and the bombs now had to be made immediately, we just put some sand and water in a small bucket and mixed in the seeds. He then wanted to just throw the seed bombs off the balcony, 


but I managed to convince him that the seeds would probably be scooped away by the construction workers. So we went down into the 'garden' to look for a suitable place to drop our bombs...


In the end, we settled for a space next to the old electricity house, which is not likely to be torn down in the next months and which also had plenty of sun and most important: it is not an active construction site. As you can see, he did not want to get his hands dirty and carefully shook out the seed mixture in several places. He then faithfully went to watch the seeds grow for the first few days, but then decided that they were probably dead. Patience is not his strongest asset. Yesterday he suddenly remembered the seeds and went down to the seed spot to see if anything happened. 


Yes! Tiny little plants had come up at most of the seed spots and we could already discern several different leafs, although he was disappointed that I could not name the flowers. But hey, do I look like a flower expert to you? Anyway, he now checks up on the tiny fellows every morning before going to school and he puts a thumb to me when they grown again.

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