a peek inside the fishbowl

• Social Media’s Vampires: They Text by Night, nytimes.com
• ‘McJobs’ benefit teens in later life, UBC study says, cbc.ca
• Your Eyes Are Happier Than Your Stomach, nytimes.com
• Secrets of the creative brain, theatlantic.com

This is how I cut the grass:

… at least within the confines of this one brick. :)

It makes me happy, to watch things grow.

Everyone already knows that if you have little kids at home and you’re looking for an activity that might inspire healthy eating and a green thumb, the answer might lie in planting a garden. Green beans are a good thing to plant because they grow so fast.

I planted some bean seeds on a whim, right next to a part of the fence which receives a bit of extra sunshine in the morning. They’re climbing up a metal trellis we’ve had for awhile.

A couple weeks ago it occurred to me that it’d be fun to track their growth,  so every morning I’ve been dutifully putting a chalk mark on the trellis, right next to the top of each plant as it winds its way up towards to the sun.

I knew beans grew fast, but I didn’t think they grew THAT fast. Sometimes the vines grow over six inches in the span of 12-15 hours. It’s been neat to mark the progress.

It is a sweet activity to do with kids, and there’s so much to learn here. If you want to take this activity up a notch you can also:

• Measure the space between the chalk marks every day with a ruler and track it in a journal together
• Revisit Biology 101 and talk about why plants need the sun to grow
• Harvest the beans and make something delicious out of them. (Personally I think they’d enjoy eating them right off the vine.)