Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Daisies & Buttercups

On the very southern tip of Boboli Gardens, close to the Porta Romana is a large, open, grassy area. Unlike the grass areas close to Palazzo Pitti it doesn't have large looming "Keep Off" signs, written in enough languages that you can't feign ignorance. Until recently, this area looked rather forgotten, too far from the Palazzo for most tourists, and too plain to be of interest to anyone, but the truanting high school students and parents, whose young children are eager to race around. 

This week, we saw the reason the field was left fallow. At least, a good rationale, if not the intended one:
Boboli's Daisy and Buttercup Field
The field has become the epitome of balmy spring and summer days. Sweet smelling clover, daisies a plenty to thread together or pick apart, and enough buttercups to drive the cholesterol through the rough. Blissful. Ila and I spent the better part of an hour there in the morning and then met Doug there on his way home from work in the afternoon.  Neither time did we have to share the space, although we would be happy to. It was all ours. 

Is this what they mean by slow parenting? Feels good.


6 comments:

  1. What a GORGEOUS PHOTO. Please promise you'll make an 8x10 of this and frame it for your Tucson living room! Both for the aesthetics and for the meaning (what it represents, this day...)

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  2. What an adventure you are living! And I love the phrase "slow parenting"...I've never heard it but it fits me perfectly!

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  3. Thanks for the photo love.

    Peaceliving, I meant to link to this article: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/what-is-slow-parenting/
    As a former middle school teacher I used to see quite a few frazzled teenagers as their hyper parents shuttled them from one activity to another effectively to fill out their resumes. They just needed to take it a little slower, I'm fairly sure while some did, the majority of the children weren't enjoying much of it.Thanks for visiting.

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  4. oh, oh, oh...what a lovely picture. And a lovely sentiment. Slow parenting is more work, but more reward-- this part of life goes far too quickly to be hurried!

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  5. I love this photo, and I appreciate the reminder to slow down. We don't do any organized activities, but even in the daily routine I find myself always anticipating and trying to hustle along for the next thing -- whether it's diaper change, snack, nap, etc. Really need to just slow it down and be in the moment, to hell with a saggy diaper or delayed nap.

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