June 1 is Intergenerational Day Have you noticed interactions between young children and older people? Some interactions are cute and sweet. Other interactions show fear and confusion. The way to get positive exchanges between the generations is to bring them together, let them intermingle and enjoy time with each other…

Preserving the Memories — It’s time to save those memories. The practice of preserving and canning allows us to enjoy the harvest of our garden later. Likewise, there are memories and artifacts that we may want to save, preserve, and pass down to others regarding our compassionate child that we have cultivated. Late summer…

Love and Kindness Took Root — Take the time to sit back and enjoy what you have harvested. Your hard work has brought great rewards. The cultivated plants are now producing beautiful blooms, fruit, and vegetables. Similarly, at this step, we have gone through the work, time, and pleasures in producing a compassionate, kind, loving and…

Be Patient But Not Complacent Once your soil is ready, seeds planted, garden protected, and you’re in the routine of watering and weeding, it’s time to wait; wait for the garden to grow. …

Remove the bad to make room for the good Weeding is a critical part of gardening, just like it is in cultivating a compassionate child. Weeds in a garden choke out the plants, robbing them of needed nutrients to grow healthy and produce delicious and nutritious fruits, vegetables, or gorgeous…

Keep Your Child from Harm But Don’t Shelter Them To Death — Plants and children need protecting to grow to full maturity. I drove through the town of Palisade located on the western slope of Colorado in April. Excitement filled me as I saw the beautiful, delicate, pink, peach blossoms in bloom in the canyon. A couple nights while I was there…

Allow your child to grow and embrace the person they are meant to be — If you have started plants from seeds, you know that you must thin the seedlings out to make room for them to grow and thrive. Similarly, a child needs room to grow into a healthy independent, self-sufficient person. Plants that are too tightly packed together, tend to choke each other…

Be the inspiration of compassionate actions to energize your child — Plants need the energy from sunlight like a child needs the guiding light and direction to show compassionate action. Plants need light for photosynthesis, which allows the plant to absorb energy through the chlorophyll in its leaves. It then converts this energy into food. …

Society leads us to believe that only youth is beautiful — A couple of years ago I was told I needed an anti-wrinkle cream to look beautiful, or at least, not ugly. It was an ad that popped in on my computer about a story of a little boy who had two grandmas. He called one his ugly grandma and the…