So we are a month into our first big garden! I recently put an all call out for those interested to share in the gardening and the harvest! There are usually 5 of us in our club.
We have tilled, fertilized, and planted onions, cabbage, brussel sprouts, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, squash, kale, and beets so far in the vegetable side.
There is also a spiral herb garden that has a variety of mint, catnip, motherwort, Mugwart, stinging nettle, echinacea, yarrow, anise hyssop, feverfew, fennel, blue anise, evening primrose, sage, Mullen, self heal, and horehound.
So far things are going well. I have been watering at night, but I think they need more water so I am going to look into an irrigation system.
Tending the Garden
Some of the plants are a little sad, and I wonder if its the fertilizer, sun or water? There are some gardens that have covers over the plants, so I am going to try that. The sun is really hot and full on them during the day.
While I am out there in the dirt I can feel the plants… when they are too hot from the sun I feel for them, when they need more water I can feel their thirst.
It made me sad when I woke up to see a few of my plants looking so sad. To think that I did not take enough time to listen to their needs. Feeling sad for them made me think about my actions and how I could take care of them better. I want the garden to thrive so badly, perhaps I am just learning patience again. Patience and listening.
The Horn Farm Center is a conservation success story. Born out of the effort to save the farm from industrial development in 2000, the Horn Farm Center for Agricultural Education was established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in 2004. The Horn Farm was saved by a community of passionate people, who understood that our natural spaces and cultural practices of stewarding and cultivating the land are sacred and need to be preserved.
The plant sale was fantastic! There were so many varieties of plants, fruits, veggies and herbs! I was able to purchase a bunch of things for our garden, and at the same time give back to the community. All proceeds support local, regenerative farming practices and education at the Horn Farm Center.
I was so inspired by the mission and goals of the Horn Farm Center. Currently I am working on starting our own community garden, so seeing how they do things was very helpful!
If you live in York, you should totally check them out! They have a schedule of amazing events, classes and workshops here!
Gardening this year is going to be so wonderful. I am super excited about growing food! I have purchased many seeds, and begun tilling the dirt. The garden was overgrown with grass and weeds, so before I could till I had to get a lawn mower! Being that we moved in December, we had no need to purchase a riding lawn mower for our 1.5 acres. But now it is spring and the grass was growing fast!
We were fortunate to find a 48” Husqvarna riding lawn mower on Facebook marketplace. It just reached 600 hours, which I learned is how you tell how long your lawn mower is expected to last! The average is 1500 hours. It is so much fun mowing my grass!
Now that the grass is mowed over the garden I am able to begin tilling the rest! The garden is at least 23ft. x 15ft, and I have only tilled a small portion.
The garden had turnips growing wild and taking over, along with strawberries! So I have transplanted some of the strawberries, and have let the rest to grow where they are for now.
On the spring equinox my friend Rachel and I planted 12 packs of seeds, there were three packs that did not grow at all, the rest are ready to be transplanted to larger containers! I was thinking maybe I could put them right into the ground, however it might be too cold just yet.
My Peach trees are blooming so beautifully… the green leaves are coming out. But I noticed that the bark has some mold looking fungus growing on it… some of the lower branches do not have any leaves at all. The bark also looks like its been shredded a little. Copper fungicide is supposed to work for the lechins which is what I think it is.
Another one of our trees that I have yet to identify, it is graphed…. has mites. So I purchased fruit tree spray. I hope that helps.
Gardening By the Moon
I have always been interested and fascinated by the idea of planning my garden around the cycles of the moon! Recently I came across the website Gardening by the Moon! They have wonderful digital resources that assist with what to plant and when! I am excited to be using these resources to help me plant!
I love learning as I go, being in the experience and figuring things out. Connecting with my network to hear stories of the way others have experienced life. Gardening is such a beautiful thing to build community around.
We have an idea, to invite our friends to share our garden with us. To plant food and share in the tending as they can. We would over see the garden daily. Then to come together for a community harvest dinner!!
I am looking forward to watching the garden and my community grow in peace, love, joy and unity. <3
6th graders went outside and created nature mandalas with our student teacher Anne Scott, which were inspired by Morning Altars artist Day Schildkret…
I have quite an unusual mission: To make impermanent earth art every day. Ever since I was five years old, I have been creating art with the flowers, leaves, berries, and bark right outside my front door. This has always been a way for me to feel connected, both to my imagination and the whole earth. About five years ago, after a big break-up with my partner, I started this as a daily mindfulness practice to heal my heart, help me feel gratitude, connect with the earth and make meaning in my life. However, this art wanted to have a life of its own. Over the last decade, I have created over a thousand small and large earth installations that have inspired an international movement of people to get outside and make earth art. I even have a book coming out this October! And, here’s the unique thing: Every single piece of art I have made no longer exists and that is its power: Learning how ephemeral life truly is and to love what is here right now.
Students watched a video where Day describes a little about the process of morning altars and how it can transform our perspective. Then we went outside and walked the land to gather our own natural elements. We also provided the students with flowers, beans and strings. My student teacher lead the students to create group nature mandalas!
This was such an awesome day for this assignment. The sun was shining and it felt like spring. The outdoor classroom tables and benches that were created by George Washington Carver Center for the Arts students created were the perfect place for the groups to work.
Each team member of the group had to direct a specific ring of the mandala, sharing with the students how to place the materials. I found that a few groups decided on all rings together, while others really stuck to the one ring per person.
When it was time to clean up, the students were sad and disappointed that they had to clean up their mandala. Taking a picture of their mandalas before they cleaned them, seemed to relieve their anxiety of having to disassemble it.
Yesterday we had a master gardener come to green club! She presented on pollinators, and pollinator gardens. We learned a lot of information about the different types of pollinators there are… did you know the Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly was the Maryland insect?
We have a pollinator butterfly garden which was created about 5 years ago. Over the past few years, the garden had been neglected due to a transfer of responsibility. Taking on this new role as green school coordinator, the transfer of information from the last coordinator was not easy. After experiencing this, I have decided its best to keep very well organized records. I plan to remain the green school coordinator for a while… but if I were to move on from the position, I want to be able to give the next teacher all they need to be successful in the endeavour of keeping the green school climate going. If my goal is to assist in a climate and culture shift in perspective in terms of reducing the amount of pollution and waste…then it only makes sense I keep in my the future of what I am creating and not only thinking of the future of the earth. Micro/Macro. I’ll talk more about this in an upcoming blog.
Back to the garden…
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Here is the before:
and after:
Big thank you the PTA who sent out a signup genus to find some parent volunteers. There were 3 parent volunteers who were a HUGE help.
Our garden turned out completely transformed, and we now can start to think about planting some more pollinators, and adding some type of art installation! It was such a wonderful time, being in nature and helping the pollinators!
<3
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Our first day in Malibu California, we decided to go to the Getty Villa. We had to make reservations, even though it was free, because the state of California only allows them to have a certain number of visitors each day. They opened at 10am, and we reserved our tickets for 10:30. The tickets stated that unless we printed out our reservations, we were going to be denied entry. Since we didn’t have access to a printer I was a little concerned when we pulled up, however they were very accommodating and used our confirmation email. I find it interesting when the rules state one thing but when you’re interacting with people they can choose which rules to enforce. It’s definitely a good lesson to learn, it’s all about who you know and how you talk to people.
The Getty Villa is BEAUTIFUL! What an amazing place to visit on our first day! The villa was created by Jean Paul Getty, who became a millionaire by the time he was 23, in 1915. By the 1960s, his company Getty Oil became one of the largest oil companies in the world. Getty was a self-avowed non-conformist. He was always suspicious of conventional wisdom in business, art, and life. Others described him as an eccentric, a playboy, a genius, and a tightwad. He was famously married five times and had five sons.
“He collected art with the same eye for underappreciated value that he had for a salt dome covering a rich pool of oil deep beneath it. Prizing beauty for its permanence, he preferred the art of royals and aristocrats from western history: Greek and Roman sculpture, paintings of Renaissance masters, and furniture of 18th century European monarchs. Though he delighted in the tax deductions that accrued when he donated his art to museums, he also demonstrated a genuine desire to share his art with the public.
For years Getty traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East in search of oil and art. He converted part of his Ranch House in Malibu, California (today, Pacific Palisades), into a museum so that he could share his art treasures with the public. After 1951, he never returned to California, though he continued to call it home for another 25 years.
Late in life Getty conceived the idea of building a major museum on his ranch property. He decided that it would be a near replica of the Roman Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy, which had been buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Critics derided the Villa as a gimmick when it opened in 1974, but the public loved it.
From his home outside London, Getty supervised its operations, approving every new acquisition. He proudly displayed the architectural model of the Villa but kept spending to a bare minimum, refusing even to pay for climate control for his works of art. Consistently, he cautioned the Museum’s staff that the institution would have to survive on the original $40 million endowment he had provided. He never revealed that in his will he had left virtually his entire estate to the institution in trust, giving it a greater endowment than any other museum in the world.”
When Getty’s will was opened in Los Angeles later that week, it stunned the art world. Contrary to what he had told the curators, Getty had left the vast bulk of his estate, worth nearly $700 million ($2.83 billion by today’s standards) to the J. Paul Getty Museum Trust.
The energy there was amazing. Each statue had a vibration to it that resonated a calmness. Hercules is the larges statue they had, and the most famous. I saw Venus, Aphrodite, Zeus, Nemesis, Hermes, Plato, Athena, and Apollo to name a few!
The floors in the villa were so intricate, and it was a joy to see sacred geometry everywhere! Each room took my breath away from floor to ceiling. I found myself just staring in admiration at all the amazing architecture!
The gardens were magnificent! They even allowed us to pick a few of the herbs from the garden to take back with us. I collected some Rosemary, Thyme, Sage, Lavender and a few others. They had grape vines growing from trellis’, lemon trees, fig trees, and cumquat trees.
My favorite part of the Villa was the children’s interactive room. Kids of all ages were able to draw on replicated greek vases made just for dry erase markers! This was a genius idea!! I had to play!
They also had a rubbings station with images of vases printed out, where you can choose an image and create a design. There were raised and indented images which you created by placing your paper on top and rub a crayon over the image.
The most exciting part was this large velum screen that was lit up with a spot light behind it. They had foam props that you can choose from to create a silhouette play! I think I am going to use this idea in my classroom this year. We could hang a large sheet and put on little plays based of certain themes.
Getty Villa was by far one of the most interesting and beautiful places I’ve visited. When I go back to Los Angeles I will make sure to visit the Getty Center Museum as well.
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