Expo adventures.

Wow, what a great day we had at the Expo! I'm such a dag that I am excited by gardening stuff, but there you go ;-)

We were entertained and informed by Peter Cundall (I thought one of the three talks of his we went to was more of a stand-up comedy routine, LOL, and by the way, I can't believe he is 80!), I was sorely tempted by the several bromeliad sellers (I was restrained and only bought two!), and generally had a lovely time wandering around.

I took my camera, but a smack on the wrist for me, because I didn't actually take any pics! I'm a slacker, I know, sorry ladies.

The biggest impact on me was one of the points that Peter made in his talk about organic gardening; that it's vital to teach your children to plant and grow, because it means that they will never harm our precious planet. He gave an example of bored teenage boys ripping out plants at night when he worked as a landscaper; after replacing them three times he stayed behind (hidden) and when they came back again that night he walked up and asked one boy why he was doing it. He said he didn't know (and I'm quite sure the same thing would be the reply of nearly every vandal), so he explained why he was planting the trees (to provide a windbreak) and so forth so that everyone could enjoy the park, and to his credit, the boy came back the next day and helped Peter replant. But as Peter pointed out, if that boy had been given a few pea seeds to plant when little, and watched them grow, flower, produce pods, and eaten them straight off the vine, it would never have entered his mind to pull out the landscaping plants a few years later, and (he implied) in the same way would grow up with a natural tendency to care for the environment, rather than poison it.

I looked around me as he talked and just about every head was nodding vigorously in agreement (mine included, LOL). On the way home DH and I discussed how much things have changed over the past few decades when almost every family had a backyard vegie patch or at least a lemon tree, and the kids were part of the picking and preparing of the vegies for dinner, but now kids are so far removed from how food arrives on their plate that it's not really surprising that they can't get their head around a lot of environmental issues. Not to mention the health issues that are facing the next generation.

It's all such an awful negative spiral of issues, each building on the other: stressed parents becoming more and more insular (rather than community-focused), serving their kids a chemical cocktail because it's quick and convenient (and they just don't know how bad it is - surely the health authorities wouldn't allow companies to sell food that causes allergies, illness and premature death, right?!), resulting in kids who are robbed of their peak health (and who can't concentrate properly, so are missing learning essential skills, academic and otherwise) and who are growing up under the impression that happiness comes from buying stuff (money is everything), and then we wonder why they are so self-absorbed and lacking in consideration for others.

Well, I'm not going to let my kids be part of a cycle where their life expectancy will be less than mine.

I can't do anything about housing prices or individual workplace agreements that grossly favour the employers over employees (a sore point, DH's workplace has just been taken over by a huge multi-national), the proliferation of McDonald's restaurants or the teenage gangs that roam my neighbourhood on weekends.

But I can make sure that my kids know where their food comes from, and I can make sure what they eat is real food not chemicals. I can make sure that they know we are part of a wider community and I can model how to be respectful. I can show them that our family can be happy without having to buy stuff all the time, and that love isn't measured by how many birthday presents you get. And I can give them a few pea seeds and a plot of dirt to plant them in. Which I'm going to do right now :-)