A few short weeks ago, we had a large section of the garden dug up as it was sopping wet due to non-existent drainage for the rainwater running off the large roof. This action was to actually serve two purposes - remove the marshland on the side of the house and hopefully remove the Japanese knotweed, a highly invasive plant considered a pest in most places it has spread to. The previous owners seemed not to do much about it - but the roots can run 3 meters deep and 7 meters wide from the fast-growing plant.
While the grass is growing well, unfortunately there are knotweed stalks already starting to push through, meaning there were some roots left in the soil. We are going to have to now use a strong herbicide that will hopefully travel into the root systems and kill it off completely, or at least manage the problem. I have started reading a little about it and glyphosate seems the only solution that has much hope of control. The "natural" alternatives apparently fail miserably. I have never used chemicals in the garden before and don't like the idea of using poisons, so I am going to have to read a little more on it - but thankfully, the location of the weed is in a little used area (at this time) and has no footpath next to it, meaning that people don't walk their dogs past and apparently the rabbits don't care for it.
Smallsteps is again ill (flu) today, so she can't go to daycare due to the Corona restrictions, even though that is where she got the flu from anyway, since kids are constantly sick at this time of year and parents can't keep them home indefinitely. Both my wife and I have a fair bit of work to do currently, so we are both working and taking in turns looking after Smallsteps, but she is far more independent now than she was a few months ago.
I think that part of the reason for her growing independence has been being forced to spend more time alone, but also that since we have moved into the house, she has been more confident in doing things for herself. she spends time "alone" (we are doing other things close by) in the garden and also in her room playing or drawing, where there is a bit more space than she previously had in our apartment. Her ability to find something to do for herself lifts some of the weight off and allows us space to do other things.
We have always given her space however and I think this is the third part of it - that we trust her to be alone and not do anything too silly. She is yet to really "break" our trust in this area, although the occasional accidents do happen. Overall, she seems to have a pretty decent level of common sense and a healthy respect for her environment.
We never "baby proofed" our apartment or padded corners - but I know parents who literally had their toddlers wearing helmets in the home so that when they feel, they didn't damage their heads. While this saves a lot of tears and makes life easier for the parents, I think it does far ore harm than good for the child, as they don't learn the limitations of their body in relation to their environment.
I see it like learning to use a very sharp knife but wearing cut proof gloves to stop being hurt if making an error. The problem is that there is no feedback for the errors, so there is no reason to change behaviors, which means that habits can be built on poor technique - take away the gloves and the lessons will be quickly learned. Of course, that is a painful situation to learn those lessons with a high cost, which is why motor-skills need to be learned in childhood, where the cost of failure is very low. A bump on the head, a scraped knee, a ripped page in a favorite book.
Learning by doing is the best way to learn for most people, but a lot of people are scared of failure even if the cost of failing is low. Because people generally don't want to lose or look like idiots, most of us avoid situations where we might fail and as a result, we never learn the "motor-skills" necessary to cope, let alone excel under pressure.
Growing skill is like tending to a garden, there can be many plants that require different types of nurturing - and there can be various weeds that need to be treated in varying ways - some more harmful than others, some requiring more drastic measures. However, if a garden is built on a good foundation, it is far easier to manage the problem areas than if like the garden of our house, we are inheriting the problems of bad habits and a lack of active maintenance.
Skills and habits are the same in regards to inheritance, except we are often inheriting our processes from our parents and also the strategies we developed to cope as children. If we carry bad habits through to adulthood, they are not only very hard to change, they also feel like they are part of us and changing what we are can feel like a loss. Weeds are a constant issue in a garden, but they aren't THE garden.
If part of our learned early process is building up a maintenance schedule that allows us to identify the good plants from the bad and weed our habits, we are not only likely to perform better with what we have, we will also have more space in which to grow.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
