My Fairy Garden

Every summer of my childhood, my parents would load us, and our belongings into the car, and we’d head to Kansas to visit our grandparents. It meant two days of driving with the windows rolled down and hot air blowing across our faces. This was long before air conditioned cars and interstate highways.

To my sisters and me it was two weeks of pure wonderfulness.

Nothing but fun and adventure. We didn’t mind the heat or humidity. In fact, we didn’t even notice. We were too busy having the time of our lives wandering freely around the small town where our grandparents lived, catching fire flies, eating popsicles, going swimming, playing dress-up, making hollyhock dolls, and building tiny worlds from catalogs.

We spent hours with the Montgomery Wards and J.C. Penney catalogs that our grandmother saved for us. It was paper dolls on steroids because we could create entire worlds for our doll families, not just change their outfits. We created whole neighborhoods of houses and furnished them with every possible thing our paper-doll-people might ever need.

Those catalogs were the most amazing toy ever!

Last weekend I stepped into that world-building experience again by making a fairy garden.

I’d had the supplies for a long time but hadn’t taken the time to actually make the garden.

I was waiting to purchase the “perfect” container, which I kept putting off. It seemed like a frivolous expense when funds weren’t exactly flowing freely.

Then I had an awakening.

It was one of those embarrassing aha moments when you realize just how off base your thinking has been.

I could build my fairy garden in a container I already have.

What a concept!

So on Saturday afternoon, I revisited the fun of playing with dolls.

After a quick trip to the nursery for the plants I needed, I gathered my supplies and laid them out on the patio table. Time honestly stood still while I immersed myself in this fairy world.

I organized, arranged and decorated. I sorted through my collection of bits and baubles for just the right touches.

What would a fairy use as a pond? A seashell of course!

And those beautiful polished rocks I’ve kept would make a perfect sidewalk.

It was a lovely way to spend a Saturday. I noticed how relaxed I felt.

Relaxed and refreshed.

Yes, that long to-do list is still there, waiting for me, but I think I feel more like tackling it now that I’ve given myself a break. It’s a lesson I keep going back to because obviously I haven’t fully learned it.

Play is important and adults don’t do nearly enough!

What kind of R&R helps you?

Anybody else built a fairy garden? I highly recommend it.

Now I’m thinking I need to do another one! Maybe a fairy village…