Childhood Play

Horses in winter

When I was a child, my sister and I would spend hours playing “Little House on the Prairie.” We would recreate scenes from the books that we loved and imagine what it was like to survive with only what we could grow or forage from the land. We imagined tending to our livestock (our dogs), and toted water from our well (our outdoor spigot) to our barn (a pile of sticks arranged in the footprint of a barn). Some of our favorite days were those rare Maryland snowstorms when we could put on our snow gear and tromp around imagining how hard we were working to save our farm animals from the extreme weather.

Last weekend when I was bringing the horses in from the field and covering the cold hardy annuals with frost cover, while the real feel temperature was -1, I was reminded of my childhood play. Erica and I loved imagining what it would be like to test our wits against the elements. It seemed so fun at the time. With the wind stinging my face and electrifying the horse I was leading into the barn, I smiled at childhood me. Have I always been practicing to live on a farm and problem-solve in the face of nature’s challenges?

Maybe. I’ve always loved a challenge. I’ve also come to think about my relationship with nature a little differently. It is no longer my childhood playmate who is trying to vanquish me; it is not a force I have to control. The rewards and challenges of farming have helped me realize a life spent so close to nature involves so much wind and cold, but it also opens up my world to deeply-felt appreciation.

Praying mantis egg case

In the midst of the cold snap, while working in the field, I found a praying mantis egg case in the dead marigold stems that I left last fall as a safe harbor for overwintering insects.  The wind was howling, my ears were freezing, and I couldn’t wait to get back inside. Suddenly, there was this egg case. It will spend the whole winter outside, and in the spring, praying mantis nymphs will emerge, beginning a season of eating other insects and preparing to create the next generation of praying mantis. That resilience, the enduring power to continue, despite all the chaos in our world, reminded me of why I choose to spend my days outside amidst the flowers (and the weeds and the bugs). Despite what is difficult and challenging and sometimes defeating, there is unspeakable beauty in this world. I find that it is often under the most trying of circumstances (or weather conditions) that we are reminded of that beauty.

Childhood me couldn’t possibly understand the odd mix of pain and beauty that defines the human experience, but maybe, intuitively, I understood that the challenge was necessary for the triumph. It is true in both horses and flower farming that the triumph is all the sweeter when held up against the challenge. When this frigid cold blast feels daunting, I remind myself that just around the corner will be the deeply satisfying day when the daffodils bloom, signaling that more flowers are on their way, and when those longer days return, so will the praying mantis.

Praying mantis egg case