When your children like working in the garden, at first their ‘help’ is nothing more than a euphemism for being a hindrance.
But only a few years later, you realize that they really can lend you a hand sometimes. And eventually – and to be honest, much too soon – you realize that you couldn’t have done in the garden what you did that day without their help.

Because I realized I had sown to many varieties of squashes, I had to prepare a new bed (yes, a little bit late I know). It was a patch about 15 m², that had been covered with root canvas for about three years, so I didn’t have to weed. But I had to till the soil with our grelinette (how do you call that in English?), to rake it and to apply a thick layer of compost (which had to be fetched with the wheelbarrow at the other side of the vegetable garden.)

What a luck our son (15 y.o.) decided to help me… He has more strength than I have, and he really has ‘an eye’ for this kind of work. (“Mom… Maybe you could better do that this way…” And indeed, his way usually was more practical than my way.)

Oh I love it, to see him grow up… But those childhood years have gone… definitely gone.

(On the first pictures, years ago, the first time his help really mattered. He was mowing with the scythe in the orchard (May 2008). The other pics show him pollarding the willows, in December of the same year.)