When I was growing up, a garden was plants - and almost entirely food at that, other than the border of marigolds that were supposed to keep the rabbits out and the weeds we grudgingly picked. I've been watching my own daughters interact with our gardens this summer and have been amazed at their independent curiosity and creativity. In the process I've learned, right along with them, that a garden is much, much more than plants.

Our garden is a sanctuary. Birds visit our pond for refreshment during hot summer days. Butterflies visit our flowers to fulfill their biological destiny of spreading pollen. Bugs, slugs and worms work their own magic, whether it be good or evil. While my daughters love watching the plants - picking the flowers and food - they have spent countless hours scavenging for other life forms.

They look under rocks to find beetles and slugs.


They gleefully hold their prized (temporary) prisoners (in this case, slugs - one of which fell off my daughter’s hand and almost down the front of my shirt. Boy, did they get a laugh out of my shriek of fear.)



They’ve also taken a "dead zone” of our beds and turned it into a fairy village. I came up with the idea, but they've taken it far beyond what I imagined. It's been a space hidden in shade behind their play house, in poor soil that simply nothing wants to live in - no matter how hard we try. This year I threw up my hands and decided to incorporate natural material we’d gathered from hiking to create an inviting space for fairies. Even if the fairies don't show up, they've drawn faces on rocks to populate the village with little stone citizens.


It has become a very natural (and more imaginative) version of Legos. And, we keep adding to it with new twigs and bark and rocks and such that we find on our very regular nature hikes.


This new perspective of gardening beyond plants has been extraordinary - one of many moments in my children's lives that they have been my teachers. I feel like as we age we get these very clear, focused lenses on life, like looking through a microscope or binoculars. We get so used to seeing life in this way, we forget the grand landscape that exists outside our restricted view. But, life is diversity and every single moment and molecule is tied to so many others. We miss everything by focusing on a simple something.

I don't see our garden as simply plants anymore. Now, I see everything - the food, the flowers, the bugs, the slugs, the ant colonies, the dirt, the rocks, the intentional architecture, the natural chaos - an entire planetary microcosm.

You can read more from Janelle at Healthy Child Healthy World, follow her on Twitter at @greenandhealthy, and find her on Facebook.

Last weekend my family took a camping trip in our home state, Oregon. We stayed on a huge lake, surrounded by coniferous trees, including redwoods. Mt. Hood stood proudly in the background, still topped in snow.

For the most part, it was a fun trip that included activities interesting to both the teenager and the toddler, with an itinerary developed along the lines of my previous post on planning fun camping trips with kids. We took long walks, floated in our raft, did some fishing, and enjoyed evenings around the campfire.

There were a few challenges, though. We weathered a storm (including hail), for one. We struggled with a tent that no one could set up. And we fought that age-old scourge of campers: A battalion of mosquitoes.

Those little pests love mountain lakes. But we were prepared!

We took Buzz Away Extreme Spray, a natural insect repellant. It was important to us to use a product that is DEET-free, herbal, and most importantly, that works.

One thing that makes this product work well is that it comes in a spray bottle - common among the nasty DEET stuff but not so common for natural products. Some herbal products are oils or lotions and more difficult to apply. Being able to spray it on our heads and over our clothes made a big difference in repelling the relentless critters.

We did have to re-apply every couple of hours, but when we did, it worked. I have tried other natural products that seemed fairly useless. This time, I came home with no bites AT ALL. My husband (who used it less frequently) did have bites on his legs.

The only downside is that the smell is fairly strong (think Citronella).

Buzz Away also claims to repel other pests like ticks and fleas. We didn’t run into any of those, but I wouldn’t doubt it. One interesting claim they make is that DEET-based products repel fish as well. Not sure about that although it certainly piques my interest as we did do some fishing on the trip. But the bottom line is that we are not willing to risk the potential harmful effects of DEET for humans.

As I stood by Timothy Lake and watched a swarm of mosquitoes fly around my toddler, I was glad we had our Buzz Away Spray. We might have gotten a couple of bites, but we could have been miserable!

You can pick up Buzz Away! mosquito repellant on Amazon or on the Buzz Away website.

What about you? How do you ward off the critters when you are enjoying the great outdoors?