Life's the pits

Ace and Zee have fallen back in love with spring. We were teased with a bit of spring last week, and just as Ace and Zee were eager to help rake and jump in the fall leaves, they also couldn't wait to be spring garden helpers. After I hauled a heavy load of unwanted rocks from out of a new garden area, Ace would enthusiastically push the wheelbarrow back to the yard. 

While digging out this garden space I would point out all the worms and snails and occasional centipede. This led them on a mission to find their garden shovels, throwing out every other toy in the outdoor toy bin until the elusive shovels were discovered at the bottom. Holding the shovel in her hand, Ace proudly proclaimed, "We have to find the worms, and we are going to count them!. We may even find 20!"

They have become fascinated with worms and snails. Zee likes the green worms, and Ace thinks the purple worms must be magical. All the snails in our garden are now living in one shady spot "so they can with friends and not die in the sun." Ace also informed me, "Snails have eyes on the top of their antennae. I learned that from the Turbo movie."

Since that day, any time Ace encounters a seed or anything that looks like a seed to her, she wants to know if we can plant it: apples, strawberries, almonds, corn kernels, watermelons, etc. While making smoothies yesterday, Ace asked what was in the mango I was slicing. "A pit," I told her and let her hold the sticky, somewhat slimy pit after I cleaned as much fruit off it as possible. I was expecting an "Ooo, gross!" but instead got "Can we plant it and have a mango tree? Do mangoes grow on trees? What will it look like?" 

"Um, let's google it and find out." This is my typical answer when I don't know something. I put the mango pit on a plate and started slicing an avocado.

"Mom, did you look it up yet?"

"Um, no. Slicing an avocado here."

"Well, just use your phone. It's right there."

Yep, I'm raising a digital kid. Waiting impatiently for me to do very important mango planting research, she notices the avocado pit sitting in the unused half of the fruit. "Can we plant an avocado tree too? Let's google it." I vaguely remember a friend with older kids growing an avocado plant from a pit, so start thinking during the so-loud-Ace-covers-her-ears blending phase of the smoothie that this could turn into a cool science project for us, at least with the avocado. I finish the smoothie and do in fact use my phone to google can I plant a mango pit and can I plant an avocado pit.  

We found the following sites with videos and photos that helped Ace be able to understand the entire process and do most of the prep work for both the mango and avocado pre-planting:
Mango directions: http://m.wikihow.com/Plant-a-Mango-Seed
Avocado directions: http://m.wikihow.com/Plant-an-Avocado-Tree

Ace was so excited to tackle the mango scouring and avocado tooth picking, and I was excited that the process was kid-friendly enough that all I had to do was guide her along and sneak some snap shots. Both pits will be in water until they sprout, and Ace will have to keep track of daily water changes and might start a field journal of their progress (in my dream-mama world). Then we will get those garden shovels out, and get good and dirty transferring them into soil and pots. We probably don't have the climate to plant them outside year-round, so when the seasons turn cold and we are stuck indoors thinking life is the pits, we will have some awesome potted trees inside to remind us of the eventually-coming spring.

© Erin Croley

Check out the update to this post: What the Husk?