One of the best things about having a kid is the experience of seeing the world afresh. I was reminded of that yesterday when I suggested to my almost five-year-old daughter that we go to visit the cucumber plants we had started in the backyard garden patch this spring. I was rewarded by visible excitement as she danced her way to the back of the back yard, exclaiming the whole way.

She had helped prepare the soil, push the seeds into small holes, cover them, water them. She had watched them miraculously germinate, helped weed them, and marveled as they reached out their tendrils and formed new leaves.  Then they flowered, and bore some tiny one-inch-long mini-cukes. Then we went away for some ten days.

Those plants were busy in our absence. Two of the cucumbers had reached a very large size. Magic. She snipped the fully grown fruit/vegetable off the vine with scissors, and carried one back in each hand to show mommy. Her claim: “And I did it all by myself.”