I’d Love To Be A Fairy’s Child
Fairy’s child.
-Robert Graves The poem above may be my daughters theme song. She is a wild and free spirit for sure! Always running free and playing in the dirt and would rather have sheep and horses (and chickens and lamas and dogs and cats….) than food any day of the year! She has always loved fairies and leaves notes out for the tooth fairy, and the full moon fairy, and the snow fairy…. She loves to built fairy houses! But two or three years ago we started a more permanent fairy garden as well as random fairy houses throughout the yard. This weekend we started the cleaning and planting for the year in the fairy garden!
We cleaned out the beds and kept anything still living, added in some shells and stones for borders and benches, we added a piece of bark for a bridge and some pieces of old pottery for a nice walkway. But the houses from last year were all rotting, so those will have to be made over again, (no mind! That will be fun!) and of course in the process got VERY dirty! The plants vary, but we try to have some nice lavender and succulents and always lots of soft moss for the fairies to sleep on, some tall plants for shade and some shorter ones for dancing about. This really is a fun and meditative pass time. It takes a lot of creativity to place the path ways just so, and to make tiny fairy furniture out of sticks and rocks and shells. There may be a small stream, and there is always a little pool or bath for the fairies, maybe a nice swing, or a trellis… It really gets pretty creative!
For the first weekend of work, the gardens look good, but they will get much more elaborate as the spring and summer progress. I will post updates to the fairy gardens…. for now, they have officially been invited to come on over and play!
We invite you all to start this tradition, it really is fun. I know I will count myself as lucky if I am still making fairy gardens when I am 80.