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!

WHOA! Check out that zucchini!

Yep, that's our first zucchini.  Right at 19 centimeters. (It's science y'all, we use the metric system, duh.)    Many more to come, I hope.  It's gonna be hard to split one zucchini between 15 people.  

Also, our reading day is TOMORROW!  Everything looks great so lets have a PARTY!  Pics and student post in the near future!