Out of the Mouths of Babes

     The other day I left you with a project that Ms. Sassafrass and I were going to tackle.  We had plans to make a plastic bottle tower strawberry garden.  

     We set up shop in the middle of the kitchen floor and gathered all the parts needed to assemble our garden.  Seven 2 liter plastic bottles, potting mix and a bag of 10 strawberry plants.  I had made a few adjustments to the diagram because this garden was going to be inside for a couple of weeks while we wait for the guarantee of no more frosty mornings.  The original plan called for the first bottle to sit on the ground, where it would drain.  Since I didn't want it to drain on the kitchen floor, I made a "catch" bottle for the water and attached it to the bottom.  This of course, wasn't going to allow it to be free standing, so I made a macrame hanger out of household twine to hold it.  

     During the construction process my husband called to say he would be home for lunch.  I relayed this message to Ms. Sassafrass and she was delighted.  Out of her 3 1/2 year old mouth came the following words, "Yay!  Papa's gonna fweak out when he sees all dese bottles."  

     Here is a picture of our completed hanging bottle tower strawberry garden, with Sassafrass striking a pose:

     She is wise beyond her years, but patience isn't one of her virtues.  An hour after this was done she had asked me at least five times if the strawberries were done yet.

     She arrived yesterday adorned in a "Hello Kitty" shirt and ready to watch the movie "Frozen".  There is nothing finer than watching a kid's movie, that I had yet to see, with a kid who has seen it more than once.  She knows all the dialogue by heart and proceeded to tell me what was going to be said, before it was said along with accompanying facial expressions and body language. 

     I tried not to be annoyed and about fifteen minutes into the show, her mother called.  Our youngest daughter and her husband live in a "Money Pit".  An older 2-story home, just up the street from us.  They have spent the last several months remodeling the older part of the house.  The roof, on the old part, is covered with slate shingles and has a large flat area on the very top which may, at one time, have been the widow's walk.  

     I answered the phone and heard the familiar "Mom, I need you to come up here!"  We had gotten a lot of rain during the night and she had discovered a huge leak in their newly remodeled upstairs bedroom.  

     I told Ms. Sassafrass what the situation was and that we needed to go to her house.  We would have to watch the movie at a later date.  She was fine with that so we jumped in the car and headed up the street.  

     Her mother was in the attic and the access hole to the attic is in Sassafrass's bedroom.  I encouraged her to play with her toys and went up the ladder to join her mother.  What she had discovered in the attic was not a pretty sight.  There is a set of steps that lead up to the flat part of the roof, at the top of the steps is a lid that gives access to the flat part of the roof.  The lid was laying on the floor of the attic and had been for quite some time.  So here was a four foot by two foot gaping hole in the roof that had been open to the heavens during the downpour and there was another storm on the way.

     My daughter and I wrestled the bent and falling apart lid, all the while trying to remember not to step off the boards for the attic floor lest we end up in one of the newly remodeled bedrooms.  The wind was whipping down into the attic and a few rain drops were beginning to fall.  I went up the small steps to see what we had to work with on the top and discovered, for what it was worth, that you could certainly see a long way from that vantage point, clear across the Illinois River bottom to the east, several miles away.

     We decided we had the lid fixed, as best we could, and were trying to navigate the small steps together, to get it back on top of the hole, when we hear,  "Whoa, Hello Kitty's gettin cold."  There sat Ms. Sassafrass perched on top of the ladder.  

     It's really hard to laugh like an idiot and manhandle a bent and battered 2x4 foot lid, but we managed to get it on before the next storm cut loose.

     I've heard it said that a person should know all there really is to know about how to get along with people by the age of 5.  The basics that will carry you through the rest of your life.  Children listen and learn, we need to teach them well.