One foot in the garden and one foot out

This week, we've used our mornings to work in garden while we have donated our time in the afternoon to volunteer at the Lakeside Summer Camp. Working with separate K-6 groups, Jordan taught gardening classes and Katie taught drama classes. Under Jordan's wing, the campers learned how to [successfully] transplant basil babies to a larger pot, what things in a garden can and cannot be eaten, and the similarities and differences between plants and people. The class experience has the students looking forward to working in the middle school garden that Jordan and Katie have gladly devoted themselves to this summer. The students also learned a valuable lesson: You cannot eat sidewalks.

Jordan nabbed three birdhouses that had been built by students in the middle school woodshop and had the campers paint them. While the MoMA did offer us over 55 million to install them as an exhibit this fall, we turned them down in favor of decorating our garden's perimeter fence. Pretty soon we will have a couple fine feathered friends joining us out in the garden! Katie is ecstatic about this, mainly because they look great, but also because she cannot wait for the birds to eat the spiders that have recently begun to pop up through the grass-killing cardboard.

Big J bravely fights an eight legged intruder

For her drama class, Katie called upon her acting training and played theatre games straight from Viola Spolin's repertoire, plus a few extras. The games they played included her personal favorites, Huggy Bear and Milling and Seething. Even the shyest of students became excited and involved. She believes that playing games like these that hold you accountable and require you to focus and contribute to the group help anyone of any age improve their self confidence and self image. The theatre games are so group oriented that they get kids out of the trap of narcissism, too. Needless to say, she was thrilled to teach the drama classes.


After their respective classes, the girls coached a sports clinic together. They led the kids in warm up, drills, and scrimmage. On Wednesday the group stretched like different animals, i.e. how does a cat stretch? a bird? a fish? Katie's personal favorite was the worm, aka wiggle on the ground for at least 5 minutes; Jordan's was the starfish, aka naptime. By the end of the day when the game of kickball, freeze tag, or soccer was over, Jordan and Katie had to use all of their remaining strength to drive back to Somers...and figure out the lesson plan for the next day.

Lakeside was so much fun and we're sad that our time there is over, but the garden at Somers is thriving and demanding that we give it our full attention. Prepare for a photographic onslaught in the next post! We have become like proud parents with our plants, taking pictures of everyday's smallest progress. We coo when a seedling peeps up through the soil, we document their eating habits (although the plants show no signs of moving onto solids, in the near future anyway), and we scold them when they refuse to stand up straight just because the sun isn't shining. 


And yes, we do talk to our plants. Lunchtime has become synonymous with storytime. Around 1pm today Katie was perched on a raised bed, reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the entire botanical population. The tomatoes love Levin.