It's all about the kids

I had the good fortune to lead a class of youngsters on a tour of the community garden. It happened that my oldest daughter's class was doing a study on on the concept of "Community", so i mentioned i could lead them on a tour of the community garden... i failed to mention that it would in fact be a lesson on MAN gardening. I had to fail to mention that otherwise the school commissioner would get all squirrely... if you know what i mean.

Perhaps the exam at the entrance of the garden was a bit too much for a pack of kindergarten, grade one and grade two students... but sometimes you have to just roll with the punches. In a number of ways i am against tests, exams and grades for the younger pupils in our society... I feel it puts unnecessary stress on the student to perform at a level that is completely irrelevant to their development at this time... but gardening is different than primary school... it is actually important! And the purpose of the exam was to inspire curiosity with respect to the ways of our food producing friends.

So what was the plan... a pack of kids in the garden = chaos.

Clearly we needed MAN wisdom so i gave a small lecture on spinach and how spring time is spinach time but summertime is coming so it is now bean time. I had talked to the teachers before hand and had them prepare Popsicle stick like items with the name of the child on it and in the end we have beans planted now in the spinach patch. The kids planted a bean seed and put a stick with their name on it next to the seed... i will photograph later for the record.

It's funny how kids are... they hear they get to plant a bean in a MAN garden and they just form a "task based" line all eager to plant their bean seed. I made sure that we had the bean seeds without the poison... some bean seeds are coated in a poison to keep other life from eating them... for sure one doesn't want to be involved in the poisoning of a bunch of primary school students on a mission that was meant to instill a love for gardening despite the exam and all.

Anyhoo, we got the beans planted, which was something i was meaning to do and the kids were very happy and our collateral damage was very minimal... i lost a corn plant a few lettuce and a a couple of sunflower plants but i got 30-40 beans planted so it's all good. and in the end the kids had a great time and they made me a book with drawings of their memories of their experience at the garden, and that's worth it's weight in gold any day.

for the record we did do a small lecture on bees... as we have a small collection of mason bees in the garden. pollination is everything.