We'll be trimming trees and shrubs growing over the trails.
The Crestwood woods is kind of a jungle! Join volunteers this Tuesday, August 23, from 8-10am to clear trails and prepare the classroom circle for the start of school. We'll be trimming trees and shrubs growing over the trails. We'll be clearing lots and lots of jewel weed (good thing it's easy to pull!) And the classroom circle needs some tidying up. The warm, wet summer has made our school grounds so lush and green! We just need a few volunteer hours to ready the woods for staff and students. Join us Tuesday morning!
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We had terrific turnout for our last official summer workday! We were all so busy working that I only have a few pictures to share. What you see here is only a fraction of what was accomplished. We had a whole crew working in the orchard, for example, but alas there are no pictures from that! I'll be sure to get some nice photos of all the outdoor learning spaces to post before school starts. Here are some snapshots of what we did last evening: In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has volunteered their time and energy to the gardens, orchard and woods this summer. It truly makes a difference for our school.
Our final (official) summer workday is coming up THIS MONDAY, AUGUST 15 AT 5:30! Bring your family, a picnic dinner, work gloves and definitely bug spray. We have a lot of clean up to do before school starts. Just think how welcomed and inspired students and staff would feel if they arrive to a beautiful, well-kept garden on September 1! That said, the back garden is looking mighty fine indeed. The tomatoes are plump, the basil is thriving, we have a new crop of salad planted for a fall harvest (thanks, Ginny!) and a vigorous pumpkin vine is taking over the parking lot. If you peek under the leaves and between those vines, you'll find many baby pumpkins. The students are going to have a treat finding all the ripe squash this fall. Hello, gorgeous. We certainly have our work cut out for us in the overflow garden and in the front. If you look at the picture below, all you can see, really, is grass and morning glories. Believe it or not, there are beans, tomatoes and a watermelon vine hidden among the weeds. Here are potatoes growing along the brick wall in an orderly fashion. This jungle is the circle garden. The tomatoes growing here are all volunteer, and they are quite healthy! The cattle fencing you see is there to support cucumber vines. It's a little messy, but everything is growing nicely here; we just need to clean out the weeds. Last, but certainly not least, though our orchard hasn't gotten a lot of attention at our summer workdays, it has received a lot of care from Eldon and Peter, who have added new soil, planted white clover and weeded in the tree rows. The white clover serves three purposes: 1) to crowd out weeds over time; 2) restore nitrogen to the soil, and 3) to provide blossoms for bees.* Additionally, Ms. Allen's second grade class planted a variety of flowers and herbs to attract pollinators in May. They appear to be doing the job because I found a small cave in the ground where some busy bees are building a hive. Hooray for beneficial insects! And watch your step...
*I misspoke in the post earlier today when I implied that the orchard hadn't received any attention over the summer. Obviously that wasn't true! I had meant to point out that the focus of the workdays was elsewhere in the gardens. Caring for apple trees is quite a specialized task, and we are fortunate to have volunteers devoted to the Crestwood apple orchard. Don't forget our next workday is Monday, August 15 from 5:30-7:30! Since we have our last scheduled summer workday coming up in less than two weeks, I thought I'd do a quick post about the current state of the school garden. Here's the short version:
Rain + heat = abundant weeds and a thriving mosquito population When I walked up to check on things Wednesday morning, I saw that the dill, cucumber and volunteer tomatoes in the circle garden are growing just as well as wild grasses and amaranth. The overflow plot is quite overgrown, though I did spot a melon vine growing over the sunflower wall, as you can see in the picture above. The plots directly in front of the school are faring better, likely because they have been well cared for since early spring. We should have plenty of potatoes and carrots to harvest this fall! Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were swarming already and I got dozens of bites in just a few minutes of weed-pulling up front. For that reason, I didn't even go around to the back garden where they are generally even more numerous and aggressive. In other words, the gardens are looking pretty typical for late summer! I'd venture to say some parts are doing better than usual because we've been able to add a lot of good compost on a regular basis, and have the support of our gardener-in-residence* and decent turnout for the workdays so far. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the heat subsides by August 15! We need lots of helping hands to get the gardens ready for the start of school. Just be sure to bring your bug spray. *While it is certainly a huge boost to our program to have Krysta Post on board, the GiR program restricts her to two hours per week during the summer recess, which is clearly insufficient for comprehensive maintenance of our entire garden program. Our next workday is Monday, August 15 from 5:30-7:30! Bring a picnic dinner and join us as we harvest vegetables, pull weeds, and prepare the gardens for the start of the school year (hard to imagine, I know.) We really could use some rain, but otherwise the Crestwood gardens are looking good. Peas in the circle garden didn't really take, but there is a healthy cucumber vine, prolific dill, and plenty of volunteer tomato plants growing there instead. Cucumber close up! An hour of weeding the front garden plots and thinning root vegetables yielded a few small treasures to take home. Can you tell the difference between radishes and little beets? (Hint: beet leaves are smoother and slightly darker green.) We had several volunteers at our recent workday. I think everyone is grateful we had it scheduled before this next awful heatwave hits. Our focus was in the back garden: harvesting garlic and hanging it in the shed to cure (it smells really good in there!), pulling weeds, and working fresh compost into the bare spots. What are they all looking at, I wonder? Ohh. Let's have a closer look at what they found... That's right! A nest of baby bunnies had buried themselves in the garden (so that's who was munching on the beans...) just between the squash leaves and what had been the garlic bed. Of course the kids took pity on them and left signage to let future gardeners know they should tread (and dig) carefully. When you have a relatively short growing season with long, sunny days in high summer, it really is amazing to see how the garden changes from week to week, even sometimes from day to day! By our next workday in August, this will all surely look very different. Won't you join us? MONDAY, AUGUST 15 from 5:30-7:30pm
Mark your calendars! Next Crestwood community garden workday is Monday, July 18 from 5:30-7:30 Our first summer workday was June 20, and we had a small but hard working crew pulling weeds, hilling potatoes, thinning root vegetables, and pulling more weeds. It was especially nice to see Crestwood teachers volunteering their time when they were probably ready to be away from the school for their well-deserved summer recess. If you missed the first workday, don't despair. We have another community workday coming up NEXT MONDAY, JULY 18 FROM 5:30-7:30PM! Bring your own picnic dinner, wear clothes you don't mind getting dirty, and be prepared to pull weeds! Because we have weeds aplenty. Here's a wheelbarrow full from just an hour's work in the circle garden last week after the storms: You'll notice one big difference at the school. The large ash tree along the sidewalk leading to the east parking lot was a casualty of last week's wild storm. In fact, this section of the property was roped off with caution tape for the last week, making the overflow garden plot by the red wall inaccessible. Cleaning that out is a significant task we'll tackle on Monday along with the main gardens. Maintaining the school gardens over the summer is a big job, but as they say (and as I've said here before), many hands make light work. Hope to see you on Monday!
Cheers, Susan Another school year came to a close today. We're all a little older and wiser than we were in September, students and grown-ups alike! (Lots of people leave town as soon as school is out, but if you'll be here on June 20, don't forget about our upcoming workday on Monday, June 20 from 5:30-7:30!) Yesterday was glorious and sunny, and not too hot, perfect for the final salad harvest of the year. Second grade classes picked all manner of salad vegetables (lettuce, carrot greens, beet greens, radishes) to taste, then wash and share with the rest of the school. A few third graders from Mrs. Kennedy's class also came out to help thin out the carrots and beets. What follows is an indulgence of photos. Scroll through them! If a picture is worth a thousand words, well, I think you can get an idea of what we're trying to accomplish with this garden program. (And by the way, I didn't see a single kid spit out the carrot greens.) This year has been one with a lot of change: new principal, several new teachers and staff members, and our new gardener-in-residence, Krysta Post. We're also saying goodbye to two dedicated, long-serving volunteers from Outdoor Education, Joe House and Chris Schmidt, as their families move on from Crestwood. For those of us who take a long time to adjust to new situations and find our footing, change can be hard. But change can also be an indication of progress. As we close out this school year and look ahead to the next, my hope is that our program will continue to flourish and grow just like all that lettuce in the back garden.
Our school gardens require maintenance all summer long. The main jobs are keeping everything adequately watered, pulling weeds, and harvesting vegetables to share with families in our school community. How does the saying go? Many hands make light work. If you and/or your family is interested in helping with the school gardens this summer*, we have a variety of opportunities for you!
1. We have three family picnic/workdays this summer: Monday June 20 5:30-7:30pm Monday July 18 5:30-7:30pm Monday August 15 5:30-7:30pm BYO picnic dinner, bug spray and work gloves. Get to know other volunteers and our gardener-in-residence Krysta Post, familiarize yourself with the school gardens as we work together to weed and water, and perhaps have a little nibble of whatever is ripe and ready for harvest. 2. We are looking for families to “adopt” the gardens for a week at a time to water (if necessary) and pull weeds. We have sprinklers and drip hoses on timers for most of the gardens, but some areas need to be watered by hand. There are several garden plots on school grounds, so we welcome multiple families on any given week. Depending on whether the gardens need water (which in turn depends on the weather), this is a time commitment of 2-4 hours over the course of one week. If you are interested in signing up for a week, please email our gardener-in-residence, Krysta Post, or send us a message on Facebook (we are CrestwoodOE there). 3. Krysta Post will have weekly hours at the Crestwood gardens every Wednesday 8-10am. Feel free to show up and lend her a hand! This would also be a great opportunity to learn about what the students planted this spring and will harvest when school starts in the fall. *Please note that you do not have to have special knowledge or experience to help! If you don’t feel confident identifying plants, we’ll make sure to arrange a time to meet with Krysta or one of our regular volunteers to show you around. This week, second grade classes are visiting Kettle Pond Conservation Park. Kettle Pond is a hidden treasure within easy walking distance of Crestwood, like a miniature wildlife sanctuary bursting with frogs, ducks, redwing blackbirds, the occasional turkey, and a pair of sandhill cranes who nest near the pier every year. Volunteers from the surrounding neighborhoods are working to clear the area of invasive plants and restore the area to a native oak savannah. This afternoon, Mr. Kaker's class, along with several parent and community volunteers, made the inaugural trip to Kettle Pond to observe wildlife and collect water samples. We walked quietly down the trail to the pier... ...and explored. They looked under logs, scooped water and dumped it back, then scooped again, dumping it into buckets and shrieking with delight with the discovery of every tadpole, every wriggly creature, and every snail. Kids laid down on the "belly board" (the pier) to scoop water and peer into the muck. Today was a gift. We had the gift of perfect weather (not too hot, not too cold, not too windy) and - even more importantly - the gift of plenty of time and space to spread out and experience and discover. Many cups of water were collected and dumped again and again in the search for tadpoles (everyone loves tadpoles!). A few shoes got wet but no one fell in the water (whew). We saw and heard so many things: a family of ducks swimming through the water, territorial redwing blackbirds screeching at us on the pier, a green gelatinous blob of tadpole eggs (that Mr. Kaker aptly described as "ghostbuster slime"!), bugs galore, the cacophony of frogs. Arguments broke out over who had a turn with the blue net, and who got to go next on the rock closest to the water. No one spotted the cranes, but they may very well have been there, hiding among the grass, and watching us. Personally, my favorite part of the afternoon was watching how differently every kid experienced Kettle Pond. When one kid scooped a cup of water full of water fleas and bounded across the boulders, hollering with barely contained excitement, "MR. KAKER, LOOK, MY WATER HAS DANCING DIRT IN IT!!", another whispered quietly to me, "The frogs sound like a xylophone," as we sat still. Listening. Not to get too precious here, but experiences like these are exactly why we believe so deeply in outdoor education. It is hands-on learning at its finest. This program would not be possible without volunteer help, either. Thank you to the parents from Mr. Kaker's class who helped wrangle students and manage the equipment and supplies. Special thanks to Peter Plane for helping run the show, giving instructions, distributing charts of pond creatures so we could figure out just what we were looking it, and explaining how to use the equipment for collection and observation.
Spring is an exciting time to discover the beautiful spring ephemerals that grow in our woods. An ephemeral is a plant that emerges in spring, flowers, bears fruit and dies back in a short two-month period to then stay dormant until the following spring. Here are some plants currently blooming that you can spot from the various trails in the woods. A spring plant scavenger hunt will be ready next week for classes to use! Virginia Bluebells May Apples (also known as umbrella plants or duck foot) If you look under the umbrella of the May Apple, you will find the fruit. This fruit is edible once it ripens in mid-summer. Great White Trillium with clusters of three leaves, three flower petals Prairie Trillium with dark red flowers Wood Poppy noted for its yellow flowers and fuzzy seed pods. Wild Ginger with its deep heart shaped leaves. You can distinguish this plant from wood violet by looking for its flower. The wild ginger flower is found under the leaves, close to the ground, a dark, reddish-brown color. Here is an interesting story of this flower from the USDA Forest Service website. "The color and the location of the flower have an unusual and interesting story. The flower evolved to attract small pollinating flies that emerge from the ground early in the spring looking for a thawing carcass of an animal that did not survive the winter. By lying next to the ground flower is readily found by the emerging flies. The color of the flower is similar to that of decomposing flesh. Whether these flies pollinate the flower or not is in some dispute. Never the less they do enter the flower to escape the cold winds of early spring and to feast upon the flowers pollen. Some of the pollen attaches to their bodies and is taken with them when they visit the next flower." http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/asarum_canadense.shtml Bellwort or Merrybells The yellow flowers of this plant are distinct, drooping downward with long, yellow petals. Wild Geranium Five petaled, pink-purple flowers and leaves that are palm shaped. White wood violet You will also find the regular wood violet that has purple flowers in our woods. Garlic Mustard!
We continue to battle the garlic mustard. This fast growing invasive plant shades out our other native plants by dominating the understory of the forest especially in sunny areas. We encourage any classroom that wants to work on pulling it to do so! Our garlic mustard pulling efforts over many years have really made a difference in our woods! |
AuthorCrestwood's OE committee is dedicated to outdoor learning for all students. Archives
August 2017
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