My previous post about Making Daisy chains reminded me of this book I’ve been meaning to review: Honeysuckle Sipping The Plant Lore of Children by Jeanne R. Chesanow
What is my plant lore? It’s not much, really. How to braid pine needles and attempt to weave them, how to use a blade of grass as a whistle, making play environments for my glass animals with moss and flowers and sticks and stones, where to find the blueberries and chipmunks at my grandparents house… dandelion seed heads, maple seed ‘rhinoceros horns’, what else?
I had a suburban upbringing. But it was the 70’s and 80’s and supervision was lacking in comparison to current times. As I read through this book I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh yeah! I did that too!”. I think that, anyone who reads this book will have those moments of remembering too and it will bring joy.
I just love this book. The author sent out a call for people to remember and write to her about the plant lore of their own childhoods and she amassed a lovely set of stories and reminiscence.
In the intro and through out the book she mentions more ancient childhood plant lore. And, I would like to point out here, MOST of this book is white, European and European-American childhood plant lore. There are some mentions of Indigenous North American children, however. I would love to read about other cultures nature play. Note to self: see what you can find about this!
One of my favorites mentioned is a game from ancient Greece in which the kids throw a nut into a circle. Sounds a lot like the (horribly named) game cornhole, doesn’t it?!
Here is a link to a whole scholarly article about play and childhood in ancient Greece!
I’ve mentioned before that I worried about this a lot when my kid was an infant and small child. What would my kid’s childhood plant lore/memories of time spent in nature end up being?! We lived in a loft in West Oakland and there was concrete for days!
I feel lucky that my mother’s group ended up creating a Forest Pre-School which we called ‘Oakland Urban Forest Community’. We hired a Waldorf teacher and spent a ton of time trying to make it work. It DID work for quite a while and then it didn’t and I can’t even remember why! I do know that my kid spent three days a week in nature with other kids, guided by like minded parents and a teacher. They made boats out of bark and sailed them, created puppets out of natural materials for plays, went on nature walks, and many other things.
This is also one of the reasons I sent him to Park Day School in Oakland.
At home we had squirrel tea parties with flowers and seeds as the meal, we picked and ate ‘sour grass’ (Oxalis) on our walks in the neighborhood, and we made roly poly houses with natural materials, so I hope he remembers those things!