Yogurt Seeds

It's not 40º or even close today. But it's hot. There's a bit of a fresh breeze. I can't smell the ocean today, but I can smell the coconut with a fluorescent pink straw stuck in it that is sitting next to my laptop on my patio table this afternoon. We're almost midway through semana santa a.k.a. Spring break. While it would be nice to walk down to the beaches, our beaches are unrecognizable right now. That is to say, they're packed.

No bother. I've been keeping busy here at home. The girls bought seeds and planted a container garden. In 30 days I'm promised radishes. 60 days until my basil harvest, and 90 days wait for the beets. Phoebe drew pictures of her veggies on cardstock, glued them to chopsticks then stuck them into the pots to identify the plants. There's also a pot whose card has a question mark on it, this will be the mystery plant. The seeds came free with Phoebe's yogurt. There was a little paper packet inside the packaging of her tiny snack cups. We're all a little excited to see what the seeds produce. But that wasn't so in the beginning.....

Look Mum! Seeds! Now I can have my own garden!

Cool! 

Later that day....

Look Papi! Seeds! I'm going to grow them with water and sun! I'm going to have my own garden!

Cool!

Later that week at breakfast, while studying the empty little yogurt cup...

After we plant the yogurt seeds, you're not going to have to buy yogurt from Soriana anymore. I'll have my own yogurt tree!

Uhhh....

It's gonna be so cool Mum! I can share them with all my friends at school! 


But Honey, the seeds that came with your yogurt are going to grow a plant, or a flower. Yogurt doesn't come from seeds Babe. Yogurt comes from cow's milk, then people do something special to it to turn it into yogurt. Yogurt doesn't grow on trees Sweetheart.


( painful pause as colour drains from daughter's four year old face, which then drops it's jaw agape and twists itself  in preparation for....FULL. ON. MELTDOWN. )

It was not a typical reaction. Certainly not for Phoebe, but in retrospect, I think she must have been silently imagining the entire yogurt harvest from start to finish for the whole week. Perhaps when she had lined up all of her school bag options the day before, she wasn't just playing around, but rather deciding which bag would be the most appropriate for transporting her harvest to school to share with all of her classmates when the yogurt seeds finally produced their bounty. She had probably daydreamed about which flavours would grow from her tree. Maybe even secretly hoping that the peach yogurts she loathes wouldn't grow at all! Or maybe she had already planned on giving those ones to Alejandro. (He's rotten)

However it played out in her beautiful little four year old brain, she was quick to recover from her meltdown. And now we all excitedly wait to see what will grow from the mystery seeds.......