Mother guilt grass heads

So, this is what a hefty dose of 'mother guilt' produced in our house this week.

At the end of last term the big girl proudly bought home a small bean seedling that she'd been growing in class. It had been tended and loved for weeks, and we'd had regular updates on it's progress. It even survived being pulled out of it's soil by one extremely competitive classmate - he pulled ALL of the classes out except for his own so they wouldn't grow. Lucky I'm not his teacher, I'd have gone in with the weedkiller for his (hee hee). Once it was home, the big girl kept reminding me that she needed to water it, and couldn't do it herself as it was on a high shelf (to avoid the littlies destroying it). "Yeah, yeah" I kept saying, but obviously left it too long as when we did water it and transplant it to the garden it died :-( I even tried to revive it with extra water, fertiliser etc, but to no avail - it was knackered.

In true gen X style I felt I needed to fix this for her, or as I couldn't do that with the thing being totally had it, compensate for it. I'd seen some kinda cute heads with grass growing out of them and thought it might kill three birds with one stone - satisfy the big girl's urge to "grow something", redeem my reputation and also give us a craft activity one afternoon. And they looked dead easy to do...



For once I was stumped as to what words to Google so just tried "children's grass head" - lo and behold that's what they're called - grass heads. So after a few minor (or not so minor) setbacks:

1. Sawdust, you fill it with sawdust? Who the hell has a bag of sawdust lying around? OK, something loose & organic that will allow water to draw up to the seeds easily. So I mixed a loose soil with some crunched up dried leaves and stuff.

2. Grass seeds. OK, none of those lying around either, off to the supermarket... what, I don't need a kilogram! And $15! Right, some spring onion seeds will do. We can mix them with the old carrot seeds at home.

3. Old stockings... hmm, haven't worn them for ages, I'll get a packet of knee-highs at the supermarket... Forgot all about it so have to use a weird browny pair, frugally cut into 4 (the big girl had a friend over for a playdate)



Anyway, it all worked out OK. The trusty hot glue gun came through and did the sticking of features and all was well. One girl satisfied... for now. And one mum just a teensy bit nervous about the *%#@&! things sprouting!! :-)