Goodbye Garden

School has been out for about 2 weeks and I have been so busy.  I moved to Temple TX to join my husband!  Yea! As a result, I had to leave this garden project behind.  BOO!  It took about a week longer to get internet than I thought, hence the break from blogging.  At last, I have internet access and time, what a magic combination.

It was a very emotional departure for me, a mixture of joy, sadness, guilt and excitement.  I had a hard time handling it all.  The last days of school I asked the garden kids to write about their experiences in the garden.  We also took lots of pictures.  I wanted every kid to have a souvenir, they all ended up with a thick envelope full of pictures.  Here we go:

Before (February)

After (End of May)

"At first when we were first cleaning the garden area to make the garden it was hard work and I thought that it wouldn’t work out because it looked bad but when we planted the plants and they grew and how I saw the tomatoes I planted grow.  My mind changed completely because how we have all those plants that we cant even walk in the garden with out stepping on a plant.  I feel so proud of all of us."

Miguel Torres

"My experience with the garden was different from others because I really didn’t help and I feel so bad."

Marcus Cook

Marcus on the left and Xavier on the right in front of our 6 ft tall corn.

"I liked the garden and so far this year was amazing for me. I will miss you all, good luck next year."

Xavier Perez

"What I liked the most was harvesting the vegetable and seeing how big they grew.  I also liked being outside instead of learning from a class indoors."

Flor Cruz

Flor in front, Katelyn is beside me. 

I liked when we got to get out of class a couple of times and when we read to the little kids.  I also liked when Mrs. McGehee cooked the vegetables and we ate them, they were very good.  I didn’t like when we had to pull weeds because there was a lot of them.

Katelyn Mosely



"I liked when we did the potatoes cause it was layers of grass and dirt.  I liked when we grew the strawberries, they taste so good. My favorite part is writing the blog on the laptop and we took a lot of pretty pictures. "

Kasharia Rodgers

Mercedes on the left and Kasharia on the right.  

"What I like about the garden, that we put flowers in the tires and how we got the rows between everything we planted and I like that we all worked together to make it look like it does now."

Mercedes Brown

"My experience was when the Washington kids came over and we read to them and made caterpillars out of fruit loops and pretzels and also marshmallows.  Another thing that was fun is when we walked them to the bus.  The whole thing was fun.  Well, that’s my good experience.  Bye."

Eriel Taylor (Eriel was not in class when we took out final pictures.)



"My experience in the garden was when our plants grew and they got really big and we got to see our rainbow tires that a tire place gave us and it was a great year and I had fun with everybody."

Icelynn Taylor

Add caption

"This experience has been an great experience.  At the beginning when Mrs. McGehee started talking about making a garden, me and Astrid looked at each other not interested in the topic.  But as the days go by in the garden, it gets more fun and interesting by the second.  The garden now looks amazing with great results."

Angel Khong

Angel was always a little more comfortable on the other side of the lens. 

"Well let me tell you about my experience with the garden.  Umm...well it was fun and hard at the same time but at the end it was all worth it.  I liked when we did the tire garden and when all the Washington kids came over.  My favorite part about the garden was when we stared harvesting.  Well, that’s it!"

Astrid Sandoval

"So you say you want my opinion about the garden...(: lol well “OUR” garden is awesome.  We planted alot of plants.  Well our class planted like three of each kind of plant.  The tire garden was a good idea because if it wasn’t for the best teacher the whole garden wouldn’t have that special color to it.  (:  Everyone did a wonderful job and I’m going to miss you Mrs. McGehee."

Jesus Estrada

Arianna left before the class wrote their letters so I don't have one from her.  

I had to show you Selenia's because I wasn't sure if just typing it would get the message across.  

I loved each response!  These kids have been such a blessing to me this year.  I learned so much from them and I watched each of them grow throughout the year.  We definitely had a lot of "duh" moments and we made tons of mistakes.  I told myself that as long as something grew, our garden would be a success.  I was so cautiously optimistic that I was constantly telling people to "Pray that the plants don't die!"  Even though a few of them did, in the grand scheme of things, it really didn't matter.  And more than anything, any vegetable that grew or flower that bloomed, the thing I loved the most about this project was sharing in the wonderment every time a new discovery was made.  A lot of people don't give kids like these enough credit.  There is so much knowledge to be gained that cannot be tested by a state assessment and there is something to be said about getting your hands dirty just because.  These kids stepped up to the challenge every time.  I will miss these kids and the garden that we grew together.  I'm so glad we had the opportunity to do this project.  Love you guys! Great job!

Pictures

Ask and ye shall receive.  These were taken by some of the Washington Teachers.  I always love another point of view.  They captured a lot of great expressions. 

Enjoy!

Feast!

Lets Eat!  Nothing like fresh veggies.  We have had so much produce lately that we decided to enjoy it.  We had a few technical difficulties but we worked everything out and between me, Mrs. Bolt, an electric skillet, griddle and crock pot we managed to pull it all together.

Our menu:

• Green Beans and New Potatoes with Bacon and Onions (bacon and new potatoes not from the garden)
• Veggie Fajitas (bell peppers not from garden)
• Spanish Rice (thanks to Selenia and her mother)
• Homemade Flour Tortillas (thanks to Astrid's mother)

I think it was pretty good.  I told all the kids that they at least had to try everything.  They all ate their fill and we had tons leftover.  We only cooked half of what we had harvested.  The homemade flour tortillas were a special treat!  Since the cooking was little hectic, I didn't take any pictures but Selenia and Icelynn captured these with their phones and sent them to me.

Snapping the beans,  many of the kids already knew how to do this.

The cook, I had to wear an apron!

I think this is supposed to be a picture of Xavier getting seconds, but I could be wrong.

Yummy!

So Good!

Sizzle!

Green beans and a clean plate!

Ariana's turn for seconds!

Almost all gone!

I've had so much fun with these kids that I don't want it to end.  We have accomplished all of our goals.     We have a few more surprises in our back pocket.  Right now, here are a few more things from our garden.  

Double Squash

Our first okra.  Every kid I show it to asks "What is that?" Maybe we will have enough to fry up next week.

It's a Party!

Starting on the back row: MaKenzie, Astrid, Arianna, Miguel; Arcelia, Selenia, Jesus, Xavier, Katelyn; Mercedes, Eriel, Icelynn, not shown:  Flor and Angel

We finally had our reading party and this is what Eriel and Icelynn had to say about it:

"Hi my name is Eriel Taylor and Im here with my friend Icelynn . Today the washington kids coming over to see our garden for the first time.We are going to read to them and tell them about our garden. We are also going to make catipilers out of marshmallows, fruitloops, and pretzels.  After that were going to hand out books that we all signed for the little kids,and read it for them.well thats all for now.  I hope they enjoy our wounderful garden.bye"

I think everybody had a blast.  We read, laughed, we ate caterpillars...yes, caterpillars. The big kids did such a great job.  

Icelynn told everybody about our vegetable garden.

Miguel talked about our tire garden.

Then everyone gathered under the tent to listen to stories.

We read as many books as we could, the kids even sang "Miss Mary Mack."  THEY ALL SANG, just proves that they would do anything to keep those little kids smiling!

We made caterpillars and then we ate them.  That was such a cute little project, thanks again, Mrs. Camacho!

So how did we wrap up our reading party, you ask?  Well, we gave away books and read some more!  Each little received a book signed by a big kid, it was so cool.

See those hands in the air?  That was the signal for this...

and so on.

This is the one that makes my heart sing.

That is Xavier reading to his sister, it is clear that she absolutely adores him.  

I am so glad that we got to host those little sweethearts.  This was a great exclamation point for the end of this project.  We have just a few short weeks left of school and then we hand this garden over to a new batch of gardeners.  My eighth graders will move on to high school and I will be moving to teach at Temple High School.  We have one more goal to reach though.  We've got to cook up some of those yummy veggies.  We pick the beans everyday and check our squash and zucchini and we are building up quite a little stash.  Kudos to the lucky people that harvest our watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, okra, corn and potatoes.  Unless there is a major miracle those crops won't be ready in the next few weeks.  I do have high hopes that we will be able to enjoy a few random strawberries soon.  

As excited as I am about this post, I think that the next one is just as exciting.  Everybody loves a good before and after.  Just wait till you see the side by side!