Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow…
March 29, 2010 – 11:46 am$1 million to the first person to name that tune…
This post is about (you guessed it!) a garden! And not just your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill garden, but a new, miraculous, exciting community garden that CKUMB is working tirelessly to get up & running by the end of April. This idea bloomed (tee hee hee) several weeks ago during a Leadership Team meeting. My brilliant and hard-working team of students want to reach out into the community and create something we can be proud of that will yield some form of product for us. Because spring has sprung and we’ve suffered a nearly intolerable winter, it makes sense that a colorful garden would be where we want to spend our time. Oh, the days of summer are coming… warm weather, flip flops, and sunshine. C’mon summer!
I digress — since this meeting, we’ve been trying to get our seeds in a row (I can’t stop, seriously). Task #1: procure a location for garden where our community partner, The Early Learning Center – East, has access to it. We want to foster a lasting relationship with the ELC-East, both with our clients and the administration there. I called over to see if sending home a survey regarding the garden (re: parent interest/need) would be possible. Low & behold –
ELC- East has a defunct garden in need of caretakers!
Two years ago, the garden was built by the school, but there was never a clear mission as to who would tend to the growing garden. It became the unwanted responsibility of two of the administrators who were awfully busy shaping the minds of our youth to keep the garden up. So, it was left untended waiting for a community partner (ahem…) to step in and save the day! Daa, daa, daaaaa (trumpet noise)! We’re heroes!
Ok, well perhaps we aren’t “heroes”; this was our initial idea after all and the ELC-East is saving us a lot of time and funding by providing a ready-made garden.
Task #2: Tie this garden into ELC-East curriculum. It turns out that the students there study plants, flowers, animals, & insects during the final quarter. They came up with the idea of planting a salsa garden. Each classroom will have an individual plot where they will weed, water, and tend during the enrichment program several days every week. Next fall, we’ll can an endless amount of salsa to enjoy all winter long.
Task #3: Equipment…errrr, yeah, um, I’ll get back to you.
Here’s what the garden looks like right now (with two of my loveliest delivery/LT members Ms. Stephanie Banos on the right and Ms. Juliette Rorie on the left):
Just you wait… we’re gonna make this garden grow!
