Leslie's Latest News

All verklempt

The garden class celebration yesterday was surprisingly emotional.

As I was getting ready to head over, the lightning lashed and the heavens opened with an insane downpour, so it looked liked the party was going to be spoiled. We set up the refreshment tables and chairs in the hallway near the courtyard entrance (instead of outdoors as we had been hoping to). Parents started coming and we mingled and looked at the photo montage posters the children had put together (using many of my photos plus others contributed by some of the adults, plus the photos the kids themselves had taken down by the river).

But then a little miracle happened - the rain ended and we were able to walk outside. By the end of the party, the sun was out and people were able to get a good look at the garden. The kids were stationed in each of the different areas and as people walked around, they were able to tell the visitors about what they'd done and what types of plants were in each area.

Then we gathered inside again for some short speeches. The administrator of the program described it briefly and thanked all of us who helped. Then each of the kids read a short paragraph about what they learned. Then we all got some gifts and were able to say a few words. We talked about how hard the kids worked, and how we felt like we were all in a team together. I told the story of the kids cheering on Henrietta when she was digging up a donated plant ("Go Henrietta! Go Henrietta!).

Many of the parents approached me and told me how much their child had enjoyed the program - talking about it at home and looking forward to getting to school each day. And the kids all said they wanted to join the garden club and hoped we would all be coming back in the fall.

Each of the volunteers was given a little bag of gifts including a group photo (which is now proudly displayed in my living room), a collection of the students' work, a card with notes from each of the students, and a bookmark made from pressed flowers from the garden. Very sweet.

And then after the visitors left, those of us who worked on it were left to feel really good about how it went, the good friends we had made, and the definite feeling that we had made a difference in those kids' lives. What a great feeling!

Gardening - Now it's Hot

So after weeks of rain, and one decent week of not-rain, we are now coping with a week of heat and excessive humidity. But the kids are sticking it out and we have a really nice garden space ready now for our graduation celebration tomorrow. I hope we get a good turnout and can get outside and really enjoy the results of our efforts. 

Tuesday was a hard-working day at a local community farm, Waltham Fields. I've got some photos posted of Facebook, and now that they've changed their security rules, I hope you can see them without having a Facebook account. I also have a few photos taken by one of the other volunteers, Wende, that shows me working with the kids to plant carrots.

Yesterday, I went exploring at Gore Place, which is a 40-acre estate about 2 miles from my house, just over the border in Waltham. I have two batches of photos. The first, taken with my iPhone, shows the walk around the grounds and a little bit of a lovely hidden perennial garden I found. Then I went back today and took more pictures of the secret garden with my better camera. 

The walk around the perimeter is about a 1-mile walk, so that will be a nice place to go for some of that exercise I'm trying to get. There are broad, grassy paths through trees, open fields filled with wildflowers, a shady walk along a brook, and then the formal front lawn of the 1806 estate building leading down to an old ha-ha. And then on my way out, I can duck behind the tall hedges into the secret garden and see what's in bloom in the perennial beds. 

So now I'm running around trying to get ready for our trip to Montreal. I just mowed the lawn; the car has had it's checkup. Tomorrow is the garden party and I need to get my hair cut. Then I can start thinking about packing. I'm not sure exactly when we'll be leaving - probably Saturday. I love that we're going by car and don't have to stick to a fixed schedule. 

I like 'Like'

Facebook has a feature called 'Like". Each item that one of your friends posts has a little button called "Like". If you click it, the item displays the names of you and the other people who liked the item.

As first, my thought was "So what? What's the point of this?" But after using it for a bit, I find that I rather like it. Of course, you could write a comment. But sometime you don't really have anything profound to say, so it's not worth writing a comment. "Like" gives you a way to show that you read the item and found it interesting. It's just a lovely simple way of touching someone and letting them know that what they posted reached someone. And sometimes it's a little pat on the back or "Good show!", letting them know you're rooting for them.

So I like "Like".

A week without rain

We had a glimpse of what summer could be like last week, and it was good! 

On Friday, I had signed up for a cart tour at Garden in the Woods, so I was so glad it wasn't raining. We had 6 elderly ladies from The Gables, plus their attendant. The cart only holds 5, so usually we do two loops, each with half of the group, but in this case one of the ladies felt confident she could walk, so we could all go together. 

The ladies had a wonderful time and were so appreciate of being able to get out in the garden. I love doing cart tours. I got hugs from some of them at the end and they all were very enthused about coming back next year and telling all their friends about it. 

On Sunday, Alex and Steven and I went into Boston for dim sum. Usually we like to do some walking along the harbor, but Steven was still getting over a leg injury, so wasn't up to a long walk. But we did have a good late brunch at Chow Chau City, including lobster dumplings, and then come back and played Dominion/Intrigue with Kelley until late. Normally we are all roughly equal players, but something happened this week and I was in The Zone, winning over half of the games. Everybody (including me) was trying to figure out what it was about my playing style that caused me to win. We concluded that maybe I was more middle-of-the road, whereas Steven gets over-committed to a particular strategy. But really, it was a puzzlement. Fun, though!

The week with the Middle School class was good. We didn't have any exciting field trips planned - just a walk to a nearby garden of one of the administrators. This was a less polished garden than some of the ones we've visited, but still had a lot of interesting stuff to look at. 

In our garden, the big job was planting some shrubs. There was a lot of difficulty digging holes large enough, since we were dealing with heavy clay soil. On the second day, I brought my heavy pick/mattock and that helped quite a bit. 

Henrietta supervised the shrub planting, Wende worked on the day lilies, and job was separating and planting vinca in a new area under some small trees. We each had crews that rotated around so that everyone sampled each job. My crews were pretty quick to figure out how to separate big clumps of vinca into many little sprigs with roots. They even came up with an assembly-line process on their own: one person dug holes spaced the appropriate distance apart, another followed along with a watering can, putting water into the holes, and the third person followed with the vinca sprigs, planting them and firming them in.

On Tuesday, I brought in a couple of my plants that I thought would work in the spaces we were planting. I dug up about 8 divisions of Lady's Mantle to plant along the front of the day lily bed, and also two big clumps of polypody fern for the vinca bed. I picked the polypody because it is evergreen, so would be a nice spot of green in the winter. It also had some bright yellow spore cases on the backs of the leaves, which gave me a chance to talk a bit about spores and how they differ from seeds.

The only problem was a few times when we ran out of things for part of the class to do. Like when all the other jobs were done except for the shrubs, which only a few people could work on at a time. Then the kids would try to find things to do and sometimes make rather poor choices. I'm learning a lot about working with Middle School kids. As Michelle says, "Structure, structure, structure!" They're eager and willing, but you need to be able to direct them or sometimes odd things will happen. 

On Thursday, Henrietta gave a class on propagation. She brought in three different kinds of houseplants, plus pots and potting soil, and again we broke up into three rotating groups, each doing a different kind of plant. My group did coleus, we also had a lovely-scented succulent coleus, and Henrietta did rabbit's-foot fern. That went pretty well, except for the one girl who was afraid of the rabbit's foot fern and thought it was creepy. Sigh. 

We all got to take cuttings for ourselves. I really hope I can get that aromatic coleus to take - it was very nice. 

Rita, the Community Education coordinator, has been asking all of us if we want to give an adult education class this winter. I have been exploring the idea of doing a class on Gardening with Native Plants. One obstacle to developing a class like this is getting together a collection of slides, so I asked Bonnie at Garden in the Woods whether I might be able to access their collection. They normally charge for images, but Bonnie is willing to work out a deal where I develop a slide show that they can use as well. So that could be a fun winter project. I told Rita that I might be able to do a spring course if this works out.

In between the school garden activities, I also got a chance to do some work on my own garden, mow the lawn, etc. I am still behind, but it's a bit better. In the veggie garden, the zucchini is producing fruit, so I made a couple of dinners based on that - a crustless quiche and a casserole with cottage cheese. There's still no sign of red on the tomatoes and the peppers seem to have given up the ghost. I might get some green beans before leaving for Montreal next week.

On Thursday night, the good weather ended and the heavens opened in torrential rains again.

On Friday, I met a young guy, Adam, that Nancy had asked me to take under my wing. Adam and Nancy's niece Sara, will be moving to the area this fall. Sara is going to graduate school at UMass Lowell and Adam will be continuing in his current job remotely and looking around for a graduate program to enter. Adam was here for a short time in advance, looking for an apartment and also visiting with a friend of his that works in the Stata Center at MIT. 

We initially met for coffee at Starbucks, but hit it off pretty well, so I invited him to lunch at Legal and then I took him on a quick driving tour through Boston. We stopped at Castle Island to walk a bit and look at the harbor. I kept apologizing for the rain, but he loved it, coming from a dry state like Colorado. He's already arranged for an apartment in Lowell, so didn't need any help with that, but he hoped that he and Sara could meet up with me in September so that I could show them around Boston. I said it would be a pleasure. 

So now I'm getting into the last week before Montreal. I am so not ready. I have been working on finishing up my taxes, trying to get my house and garden into shape, etc. There is also a nagging sound my car is making that has me a bit worried about going on a driving trip. I brought it in a while back and the mechanic didn't see anything wrong, but maybe I should try again. All I need is for my car to break down in the wilds of Canada. Now that would be an adventure....

Gardening, Week 3

Three more students joined us this week, so we had quite a crew. On Monday, we did some major work in a second area, digging out some daylilies (which will be transplanted) and then trying to get out as many of the weed roots as we could. Henrietta brought in some small shrubs which will be going in that area. We also planted the seedlings of sunflowers, squash, gourds, and parsley that we had started in the first week in among the perennials of the first bed.

On Tuesday, Carole Smith Berney came with her nature artifacts and slide show of animals along the river. We passed around and inspected feathers, nests, eggs, and dried insects, and saw some great photos of birds and animals. She brought a cool machine that played bird songs and we were surprised to learn that the call of the bald eagle is actually pretty wimpy. (The call they use on the Colbert Report is actually of a different sort of eagle.) The kids were way high in guessing the weight of the great blue heron (it's only 4 pounds!). 

On Wednesday, we met early for the walk along the river. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we had a lovely time, not only at the river, but also checking out some of the interesting gardens we passed along the way. We saw a flock of Canada geese that swam over across some heavy current to see if we had anything to feed them. It was fun to watch them turn their rumps up as they ducked their heads down looking for underwater food. We saw turtles sunning on logs and one really giant bullfrog. And down at Laundry Brook, we saw a Black Crested Night Heron standing like a statue on a river stone. 

Carole brought copies of her Charles River wildflowers booklet, so we identified many of the plants we passed, and also pointed out some of the invasives like Japanese knotweed, multiflora rose, and garlic mustard. And the first thing we identified, and which we kept reinforcing, was the poison ivy which is rampant along the river there. We had asked the kids to wear long pants and to be careful about not brushing against the vegetation along the side of the path, so I'm really hoping that no one comes in with a rash on Monday.

On Thursday we had a light day. We potted up some of the remaining seedlings for them to take home if they wished, planted some carrots from seed directly into the bed, watered for the first time, and did a bit more weeding and cleanup of the beds. The permanent labels arrived and we started setting them out, but then discovered that they'd only sent half of what we ordered. So we made a quick phone call and hopefully the others will come next week.

So we're making good progress. Two more weeks to go....

Walter Cronkite and Isaac Asimov

I was reading a series of remembrances of Walter Cronkite in Salon, and I came across this quote from Isaac Asimov's biography, In Joy Still Felt:

Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer: "My father will be thrilled"

I taped a show with Walter Cronkite, who was narrating a program on the future, one called "The Twenty-first Century." I was rather excited about this, for I admired Cronkite extravagantly.

I sat down in a chair across a low, round table from him, and while the technicians fiddled with the light, I wondered whether I could say, "My father will be very thrilled, Mr. Cronkite, when he finds out you've interviewed me."

It seemed so childish a remark that I didn't dare make it. I was afraid Cronkite would call off the whole thing in disgust.

My hesitation gave him the chance to speak first. He said, "Well, Dr. Asimov, my father will be very thrilled when he finds out I've interviewed you." (New York, 1968)

From "In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov," 1954-1978 (Doubleday, 1980)

Week 2 of the gardening class

We had another good week of the gardening class. A few more students showed up (their families had been on vacation the first week) and we only got rained on a little. 

On Monday, we had a major work day, digging up and ripping out weeds in the main raised bed we are planting. We found some interesting things - the most interesting being a bit of jawbone with teeth that appears to be the jawbone of a predator - probably a cat.

I brought a few bits of show and tell and gave a short talk on spring ephemerals, showing the leaf and hinged seed pod of the twinleaf and explaining how it was named after Thomas Jefferson. Also a flower, leaf, and seed pod of a Celandine poppy, showing the eliasomes on the seeds which are like candy to ants and which entice the ants into collecting and burying the seeds in their middens. The kids were interested and asked to plant the twinleaf seeds; and the teachers and gardeners also told me after that much of this was new to them. 

On Tuesday, a reporter and photographer showed up. Unfortunately, this was a less visually interesting day, as all we did outdoors was spread much on the weeded area, but the visit did result in an article which appeared on the front page of the local paper. 

Indoors, however, we went through an interesting exercise. Henrietta and I had prepared a list of the plants we were obtaining for this bed, along with the height, color, and bloom time. Henrietta went through the list, describing the plants and giving some information about what she considers as a designer when siting the plants. For example, bleeding heart blooms early, then its foliage gets a bit ratty, so it's good to have something in front of it that will hide it later in the season. Then we asked the kids, in small groups, to plot out a layout for the garden. Then we met in a circle and everyone showed their design and Henrietta commented on them. It was a difficult exercise, but did a good job of showing them how to go about designing a garden. 

Wednesday was the day of our field trip. This week we visited the home of a local gardener, Dawn, who was donating some plants to the program. After touring her garden, we dug up the plants she was donating. One bleeding heart was particularly resistant to being dug up, and as Henrietta went at it with a shovel, the kids gathered round and started changing "Go Henrietta! Go Henrietta!" It was very charming.

We loaded the plants into three wheeled carts and the kids took turns hauling them back to the Middle School - a .6 mile walk, according to Google maps. Along the way, we stopped to look at some nice front-yard gardens and identify some of the plants. Of course, halfway back the heavens opened and we all got totally soaked by the time we got back to the school. We unloaded the plants in the courtyard and left them for planting on the following day.

Unfortunately, I missed the planting on Thursday because I had a conflicting meeting I really need to attend. The sun finally came out, and it was a beautiful day. I did go by the school afterward, and saw the results of the work, and it looked great! Of course, it was a bit spotty, as it always is when you start a new garden. But you could imagine how it would look when the plants take hold and fill in, and it will be great.

We had a meeting with the teachers after class on Thursday to plan next week's activities. The coordinator of the program mentioned that she'd gotten some feedback from one of the parents that their child was really enjoying it; the teachers also mentioned that the kids were asking why they couldn't come on Friday as well. So on that scale at least, it has been a success.

This week, we start work on a new section of the courtyard, and have a visit from a nature photographer. Our field trip will be a nature walk along the Charles River. And now I've got to run to get there for today's class.

By her own 'logic'...

Okay, it's really hard to understand what Sara Palin was trying to say in her pre-holiday announcement, since she doesn't speak in complete sentences. But she seems to have been saying that there is just no point in holding an office if you're not planning to run again, since that makes you a lame duck, and therefore useless. Is that what she said?

Well, if that's the case, then it's clear she is not planning to run for president, then, isn't it? Because, by her own logic, the entire second term is useless because no one can run for a third term. And if the second term is useless, then there's no point in running for it. And if you're not going to run for a second term, doesn't that make the whole first term useless, then? So no point in running for the first term either.

So that's a relief. You betcha!

Garden class kicks off

This past week was the first week of the Middle School gardening class that I'm helping with. And I'm pleased to say that it all went very well, except for one day when we got rained out. It actually was cloudy with some light sprinkles every day, but on Thursday it was pouring with lightning, so we didn't even try to work outside.

Day 1 was just orientation, when we all introduced ourselves and met the kids. We showed them the area that we will be planting, the tools we'll be using, and described some of the field trips we will be having throughout the course. We also toured the Middle School courtyard and introduced them to some of the plants and trees there.

There is a science teacher and a language arts teacher working on the project also, and they are tying their teaching in with what we are doing in the garden. They are having the kids keep journals which they share with us each day, talking about what they learned each day. 

On day 2, we go our hands dirty. Henrietta, the landscape designer who is the head volunteer and who has been doing amazing work getting all this organized, brought buckets of compost from her garden, along with pots, seeds, and soil amendments. We explained all of the components and had them mix up potting soil and plant seeds of beans (to take home), pumpkins, gourds, parsley, and sunflowers. We are hoping these will sprout in time to be set out in the garden in the 4th or 5th weeks of class.

The kids were a little restrained on the first day, but after they had the fun of actually doing something themselves, they started to get into it. And on the third day, when we had our field trip, they really got excited. The field trip was to Henrietta's garden, which is about a mile from the school. We'd arranged for all the kids to be dropped off at Henrietta's in the morning, and then we walked back to school after we were done.

At the garden, they got to learn about more different kinds of plants. In addition, Henrietta showed them her compost piles and showed how garden waste decomposes into compost. She had them sieve compost, showing them where the compost that they had planted in yesterday had come front. And when they got back to the classroom, the science teacher taught them more about soils and compost, which of course made a lot more sense to them after they had actually seen it in action. And with the language arts teacher, they learned about different poetry forms, such as haiku, and wrote some poems about the things they had seen at Henrietta's.

One big hit of the field trip was that Henrietta had arranged to visit a neighbor who keeps bees. The neighbor actually came over in full bee-keeping regalia and kept the kids (and adults) entranced for about as hour. She opened up a hive and let us see the bees inside, and then gave us samples of different kids of honey and wax that she has harvested from her own bees. The kids had lots of questions, and it was hard to drag them away. I learned things, too. 

To keep them entertained during the walk back, we introduced them to 4 plants at Henriettas, then gave them maps so they could mark off whenever they saw those plants on the way back to school. The plants were pretty common: daylilies, hosta, geranium, and euonymus, so there were plenty of sightings. 

On the 4th day, we were hoping to start weeding the bed. But as mentioned above, the rain was coming down like crazy, and there was lightning and thunder, so we didn't even want to try it. Hopefully Monday will be better and we'll get a little extra time to make up for missing a day. So instead they spent the full morning in the classroom. One of the things they did was make thank=you notes for the bee lady - making big honeybees out of construction paper and then writing their notes on the bees. They were very cute. 

We'll be getting some new kids next week, as some families who signed up for the course were out of town on vacation this week. It's too bad they missed the first week, but so it goes. Next week, we'll start by weeding the bed. Then we're visiting another garden to dig up and bring back some donated plants. After we get back, Henrietta will explain how she decides how to lay out the plants, and we will work together as a group to figure out what should go where. And, if time permits, we'll start planting.

I'm going to have to miss Thursday's class next week because I have a board meeting I have to go to at the exact same time. I have to say, I'll be really disappointed to miss out - it's really been a lot of fun.

In addition to attending the activities and helping schlep things around, answer kids' questions, etc., I've been doing a little bit of behind-the-scenes work. I managed to arrange for a $500 grant to pay for the tools, supplies, and some plants that we will be purchasing. I've recruited a well-known local photographer and naturalist to lead a walk along the Charles River in week 3. I've helped with donating some supplies and finding others on the internet. I suggested the idea of constructing a wattle fence if we have time, and researched internet articles about how to do it. 

But Henrietta has really been the force behind it all. She has such enthusiasm for gardening, which becomes very evident to the children as she works with them. It's been a real joy to watch her in action, and also to meet the other local gardeners (Deborah, Wende, Ann, and Lois) who have been helping out. And the kids are fun, too, especially as I'm getting to know them now. Definitely a great volunteer activity.