The Perennial Question

The official Hands for Growing summer program is complete for the year, today is the first day of school - and the garden is looking better than ever! 

This is the perennial question - what do we do with the fact that the garden continues to grow and produce after the program is done?

Participants and families are invited to continue going out to the garden to care for it, and to pick anything and everything that's ready. But, when school starts, life changes. There is a new focus and it takes a lot of energy and time.

Relationships, too, change and grow. Sometimes life causes peoples' focus and energy to change, and the question becomes, what happens to the relationship? Of course, there is no one right answer, and often, no easy answer.

In the meantime, here are pictures from the garden this morning. Enjoy!

Potato plants are bloomin

The corn is soooo close to being ready!

Do you see the pumpkin nestled in there?

Beans going up the pole

You have to see the sunflowers in person to
 appreciatate how tall they are!

Lots of tomatoes coming on

Bee balm and Zebra grass

Our funny spiderwort that is blooming
at an unusual time.

Celebrate!
Aug. 8

Explaining the lasagna garden

After painting in the morning and watching the rain pour down in the afternoon, we met at 6 in the evening for an ice cream social with families.

It was windy at first, and the sky looked ominous for a bit, but the weather calmed down and it was a beautiful evening.








It's fun to show off the garden to family members.

We had family members from Texas!

Looking at the plants with animal names

The Lamb's Ear is so soft!

 

And then....there was ice cream!

Papa knows how to have ice cream and all the fixin's

This "special" combines the best of the
bowl and the cone.

We have one more Wednesday morning to meet before school starts. It's been a great summer of fun and learning. And even though we will be done with our Wednesday mornings, the garden will continue to produce so families are encouraged to come out and reap the benefits!

Choices

Aug. 7

Today we played in the paint! We painted the box for the lasagna garden, and the choice for color was....a mix!                                                       The preferred choice for painting...spray paint.                                                                                                                                                                                            We were a small crew, but the painting got done quickly...and with no paint on each other!

                                                                                                       The hardest part was working in the sunflowers to get the north side of the box painted.                                                                                                                                                                                                 When it was done, it was fun to see how much it brightened up that part of the garden

Since the box got done so quickly we had a chance to finally paint some tire planters that didn't get done last year.

In the afternoon we had some hard rain, but it didn't affect the paint, so we were ready to go for the ice cream social in the evening.

After the painting we played a game called "Would You Rather". The game consists of statements in which each person has a choice to make. Some are easy, some difficult, some serious and some funny. A couple of examples are:

"Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly?"

"Would you rather dress like your parents or act like your parents?"

Most of the statements lead to explanations, discussion and many times, laughter.

After "Would You Rather" we talked about choices we make in relationships. We talked about the value of making some basic choices, or setting your boundaries, before a situation comes up in a relationship. It's easier to make some of those choices when you have time to think it through, and maybe talk about it with someone else. Then, in the pressure of the moment you don't have to be struggling to weigh pros and cons. 

We talked about anger and the fact that it is an emotion that is part of being human. Every one gets angry sometimes, what makes a difference is the choice you make in how you act as a result. It's been said that anger is an emotion, violence is a choice. If someone makes the choice to be violent it is their responsibility, not the responsibility of the person they act violently toward. 

When a person you are in a relationship becomes violent, you have choices to make, too, to keep yourself safe. 

Here's a great, easy to read list of choices a person can make about how to handle anger:

 http://www.phoenix-society.org/downloads/resources/uses_for_anger_20130520_125233_22.pdf

Progress and plastic cup pyramids

In spite of marauding rabbits and getting a late start, we're seeing the garden mature - there are tiny,                            green pumpkins,  green tomatoes, ears of corn setting on, and we're cutting spinach! The oregano and basil that struggled in our experimental gunny sacks are looking good, also!      

Last week we talked about painting the box for the lasagna garden.  Our plan was
 to prime it this week, and paint next. When we got to the garden this morning, it was chilly and damp. We debated a bit, but decided to go ahead. That turned out to be a good decision as it warmed up and skies cleared after about the first hour.

 Our discussion on relationships started with a game - each of us held a piece of  yarn that was tied to a rubber band. Our group task was to grab a plastic cup with the rubber band and move it, until we had 10 cups built into a pyramid.  Sound easy?

It was...at first. Then, the wind blew the tower over, then we knocked it over. To our surprise (and dismay!) one cup fell right inside the other. THAT one took some time and patience!

At one point, one member of our group simply grabbed the cups and put them where they needed to be. DONE! 

We laughed and then talked about how important it was to be able to communicate clearly with each other so that we were able to work together successfully in order to build the pyramid. Just so, it's important to communicate clearly in relationships to avoid misunderstandings.

We also talked about how many times something unexpected knocked down our "garden pyramid". It was easy to make analogies between our gardening experiences and the rather fragile pyramid.

In this short video you'll laugh at how many communication mistakes are made. See how many you can count!                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RY_72O_LQ