Fairies at the bottom of the garden...

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl."
                                                       James Matthew Barrie (Peter, in Peter Pan, act 1)

I spent many years of my childhood constructing fairy gardens with my Aunty M. She would keep them on her front porch until the end of the school holidays, and tidy them away after we forgot about them in a few weeks, leaving the boxes fresh and new for us to to start again next holidays.

She gave me the boxed set of Flower Fairies poetry books that I had pored over for many many years until the books almost fell to pieces. Tiger is forever bringing them to me to be fixed up, and I tell her never mind, the fairies like to be well loved.

I thought I would revive a little of the magic of my childhood and took the kids off to gather some supplies to make their own fairy gardens.

You can make one too!

You need:

A box/dish/tray. Today we used foil bbq trays

Dirt/Sand

Pebbles

A small pot or old coffee mug or teacup for the fairy shelter

A shallow dish for a pond. We used the saucer from the pots we used for the shelter.

Flowers, leaves, decorations. We used a mix of plastic, and real flowers out of our garden.


First we filled our trays most of the way to the top with dirt.  

Then the girls positioned their pot on it's side, party buried in the dirt to make a shelter. Then they pushed their saucers into the dirt to make a pond, and decorated around with pebbles.

Lastly it's just a matter of filling  up the garden with flowers and leaves and whatever else you can find until you are happy with it. Everyone's garden will be different, there is no right and wrong!

 
Tiger used the tiny daisies by our front steps as "lillypads".

Now we have to put them in the garden so the fairies can visit!

Frog wanted hers by the front door, Tiger put her under a lavender bush so it would always smell nice.

Now we have a special place for our fairies to rest and play!

Frog spent all afternoon running out to "see if the fairies are there yet!" I'm going to sprinkle some fairy dust (glitter) around to show her that they have visited.

And lastly, we found this groovy cocoon on a geranium bush. There is something green inside so we are hoping to see a butterfly emerge soon. 

Today was a window into the sparkles of my childhood. The best gift I can give my girls is a cloak of magic and wonder, just like I wore.

 
 I think that people who can't believe in fairies aren't worth knowing. 
                                                                                      ~Tori Amos