FOR GIFTS OR PROFIT... MAKE ROW MARKERS!

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One of those "old-fashioned" ideas that seems to be too often forgotten these days is the concept of expecting young people to initiate and take responsibility for their own constructive projects. MOTHER feels strongly that youths, as well as adults, can be creative "doers", working toward an ecological and selfreliant lifestyle . .. whether their tasks be raising chickens on an isolated farm or maintaining rooftop container gardens in the inner city. As part of our efforts to support the endeavors of our often overlooked "underage" citizens, we're presenting this regular series of articles written for and by MOM's younger readers.

by Julie Driscoll

My mother is a fanatic gardener, so whenever we children are trying to decide on a gift for her, we always know that she'll be happy to get something to use in her garden. (Grandpa even gave her a truckload of manure one year, and Mom said it was about the best gift she could have received.)

So, when I was five, I decided to make a large wooden tulip to decorate one of Mom's rows. With my dad's help, I built it, painted it, and fastened a stake to it. I told my mother the tulip would keep the bugs out of our sweet corn. It didn't exactly do that, but it did give me the idea to make whole sets of row markers.

My creations are larger-than-lifesized, colorful wooden vegetable shapes. The markers are attached to stakes and placed in the garden to identify the spring plantings. (And, to make the gardeners smile, I paint happy faces on each vegetable-shaped sign.)

I made my first set of six mark ers for Mother's Day four years ago. Mom was so thrilled by the present that I painted her a different set the next year.

When one of our neighbors saw my smiling vegetables, she wanted some for her own garden. I made her a set, and she gave me $16. Before I knew it, everyone wanted markers, and the rush was on. It seemed like the more sets I made, the more I sold. As a matter of fact, by last year I'd gotten so bored with all the sanding and priming work involved that I didn't make any markers at all!