This week we started tidying up the school garden. We tackled one garden bed yesterday that was overgrown, dirt so heaped you couldn’t see the edges of the box anymore. The kids tackled it with great will, shoveling, loosening, clawing up the weeds with claw tools and hauling them away in tubs. They watered and cleared around some tenacious little strawberry plants.

Today they decorated plant pots, to plant succulents to take home tomorrow. I love this one (above) by a kindergartener (entering first grade in the fall). Love the way he filled the spaces around his characters. They had such fun with their sharpies. I think they’ll enjoy seeing them in their bedrooms, containing their little succulents. We’re going to plant garlic and some seeds.

I’m going to try planting a beet and turnip top, see what happens, just putting them in the ground.

We’ll try to keep the garden watered ’til school starts; maybe there’ll be a crop coming up when we return.

The kids loved getting out into the garden, pitting themselves against the shovel, driving heels of shoes down, scooping soil up. The last time I tried to get kids into a garden scene, they really weren’t interested so I wasn’t sure how it would go. But this little rural school district never seems to let me down.