I’ve been a happily married woman for ten years.

I have three children.

From 1996 through 2006, I traveled around Southern California as a seminar speaker to teens and parents, on the topic of sexual abstinence.

I know just about all there is to know about sex, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking about it and answering questions about it, at conferences, churches, and high school gymnasiums. But until recently, I didn’t know anything, about the “Birds and the Bees.”

What can I say? I’m a city girl.

Discussing sex and abstinence with an MTV generation of teenagers is a piece of cake for me. There isn’t much in life that I shy away from openly and candidly talking about with other willing participants. What I’ve been a bit apprehensive about however is knowing how, and when, to introduce those delicate subjects to my own very young, innocent, home schooled, children.

But all of that has changed since I started a pumpkin garden.

I still haven’t mentioned anything to my kids specifically about sex, and I don’t plan to for a while since my oldest is only eight. They do however know what a pregnant woman looks like, that a baby grows inside a Mommy’s tummy, and that it takes a Mommy, a Daddy, and an amazing miracle from God, to create a new baby. They know all of this because they have a baby brother who they saw me pregnant with.

In addition they also now know quite a bit, about the birds and the bees, as they pertain to pumpkins. And when the time is right, connecting the dots will be a simple, lovely dialogue I am now looking forward to, instead of dreading.

I now see how for generations parents have been able to take a child’s understanding of the birds and the bees, and innocently and effectively roll it into a beautiful conversation about husbands and wives.

If you’d like to start thinking about how you will talk to your own children about sex some day, planting a pumpkin garden with them as young children, is a great place to start.

Here is what I’ve been sharing with my own very small children, while out in our garden.

Many flowers, like roses, have all the parts needed to make new life within that single flower.

But some flowers are more like us in that it takes a Mommy flower and a Daddy flower to create new life. An example of a plant that produces these kinds of flowers, is the pumpkin plant.

Pumpkin plants develop two completely different types of flowers. The developing Daddy flower on the left, in the above picture, has a long slim stem. He is older, taller, and he will bloom first. The developing Mommy flower on the right is younger, shorter, and she has a pretty little round belly on her stem, where a baby pumpkin can grow and develop, just like in a pregnant Mommy.

Just like Adam came before Eve, it is the Daddy flowers that grow and bloom first. Here are a  bunch of tall strong Daddy flowers that will open soon. See how their stems are long and slim with no bellies for a baby?

Here is a Daddy flower that has bloomed, and notice still beneath him, behind his open petals, his stem is slim and it has no womb. He is waiting patiently for a beautiful Mommy flower to bloom, who he can share his pollen with, and make a new little baby pumpkin.

Here is what the inside of the Daddy flower looks like.

Let’s take a very close look and remember these details, so later we can compare the shape of a Daddy flower, to the shape of a Mommy flower, and see if we can tell the two apart. The long tall center of the Daddy flower is called the stamen, and it contains a very special pollen that the Mommy flower doesn’t have. Only the pollen of a Daddy flower, placed within a Mommy flower, can make a baby pumpkin.

Now you see the bee inside the Daddy flower? Look at all those bits of pollen around him. The birds, and the bees, and the butterflies, and the ants can’t help but get bits of pollen stuck to their bodies like dust, when they meander into the center of the Daddy flower. As this bee flits quickly from one flower to the next, some of the pollen will fall from him, and be left behind in other flowers.

This is a Mommy flower.

The center of a Mommy flower, is called the pistil. See how different her center looks from the Daddy flower? She looks as though she has little cups, ready to catch the Daddy flower’s pollen when it falls from a bird, bee, or ant. Once that pollen makes it’s way down inside the Mommy flower, it will come to a place where she is holding special little seeds. When the pollen and the seed mix together, a baby pumpkin can begin to form in the Mommy flower’s womb.

Here is that same Mommy flower, from the other side. You can see her womb there. And look beside her… a little Daddy flower is just beginning to grow. He wont get his chance with her however because while in the garden taking these pictures, we watched a bee travel from the Daddy flower above, right into this Mommy flower here.  She has already had her suitor and by the time this new little Daddy flower opens up, this Mommy flower will be gone and a baby pumpkin will be growing in her place.

And look over here, in another corner of the garden, this entire cycle has already taken place.  Once the baby pumpkin has begun to form, the flower which was used to create it, shrivels up and falls off, and that’s how you can tell it has worked. Pumpkins get everything they need for growing right here from the soil, water, and sun, so they don’t need a Mommy and a Daddy like you do, to take care of them. The jobs of this Mommy and Daddy flower are done, and they are gone, leaving behind a pretty little pumpkin.

My four year old and my eight year old can now identify Mommy pumpkin flowers from Daddy pumpkin flowers, and tell you all about how a baby pumpkin is made.

And look what else has just bloomed…

A Daddy watermelon flower.

The saga continues…

4 Responses to “Saga of a Hindered But Hopeful Gardener – Post 8 – The Birds and the Bees”