GroHappy

Charlotte salads

We are in the midst of near record heat, which is making all of us want to shed our down vests like a snake sheds its skin. Charlotte, my granddaughter, has spring fever as bad as any of us and doesn’t want to stay inside but rather wobble outdoors and experience nature. For her, that still means putting nearly everything in her mouth ranging from small rocks (to perfect her speech like Demosthenes) to large sticks (to clean her teeth after a meal of grass.) But I figured it was time to get her up in the garden to show her what we could eat from the outdoors this time of year.

The lack of snow and cold permitted many of my greens to winter-over nicely. The Swiss chard was coming back as well as the spinach I planted last September. Amazingly some of the slow-bolt leaf lettuce is growing along with the pak choy. The best crops are the heart-shaped miner’s lettuce and mache (Vit). They are a tasty snack and very sweet this time of year. We have a surfeit of crunchy little leaves; ideal for a small, fairly toothless mouth. My raised beds are the perfect height for her to grab and play with the soil. She plays, moving her hands across the black warming soil in a circular motion. After a bit,  she wants a little snack so I feed her leaf after leaf that she sucks down using her little pink tongue.

The garden is a new experience for her and she can’t decide how to react. What should she put in her mouth versus what should she just grab? Sometimes I think it is too much for her to handle. I often think about what she will remember of her crazy grandpa and his obsession with gardening. Is he just too weird or wonderful? Perhaps someday I will find out. Regardless spring is coming and I will just keep feeding Charlotte from the garden letting her well within reach of the lettuce but blocking out sight of the foxglove that has established itself. You can never be too careful with those you love.

Potting up, young and old

While the days begin to lengthen, January is still a month where there is little to do in the garden save catalog the catalogs that arrive on a nearly daily basis promising seeds, plants and new growth in the months ahead. But there are a few things that I can still do in this increasingly cold month. Potting up.

Amaryllis is sold and pushed as a Christmas bulb, but for me it is one that sustains me after Christmas. Though I buy new bulbs every few years, most of my blooms are from bulbs I keep and let sleep in the basement after the have flowered and summered in my backyard. They have done quite well and increase in size year to year. My challenge has always been to get them to bloom at Christmas; last year I stopped trying and said that I will just pot up a few every other week so that I have big blossoms late January through early April. 

I also noticed that the soil for my Christmas cacti had become calcified and also needed refreshment. So I had a big potting job in front of me and I thought that the best helper I could get to mix the soil would be my granddaughter Charlotte.

Charlotte has been helping me to make bread ever since she was 5 months old. She loves to stick her hands into the dough picking out little chunks for a forbidden snack. Her kneading skills would come in handy when I hydrated the soil before potting up.

I have learned the hard way that you always wet your soil first before potting up so that your carefully placed seeds and plants stay where you placed them rather than float up or tilt badly. For Charlotte, this was fine as it offered her the opportunity to get her hands good and muddy.

I gave her a small spoon as a mixing tool but Charlotte, like many of the children I have worked with over the years, preferred to use both her hands to squeeze and squish the soil. When water was added, so much the better as she started grab chunks of soil breaking them up and creating muddy balls that she smiled and giggled over. More than a few times my wife needed to remind Charlotte that soil was for mixing, not for eating.

After we got the mix right I tried to get her to help me put soil in the pots but she was too interested in embedding her arms in the soil to care. Soon she was covered hand to elbow and enjoyed the fact that we let her stick her arm deep into a watering can to remove this new layer of topsoil coating both arms.

Potting up took little time. I’m looking forward to the Spring and Summer when I can show Charlotte the fruits of her labor. Though I think for her it’s all about the mixing.

Therapy on hold

It’s been too long since I have last posted, which has been due to a combination of events out of my control. The first, and perhaps most relevant, is that I am between horticultural therapy programs. I am no longer working at Green Chimneys as a volunteer, as my mentor has moved on to other jobs and situations. I have missed working with the children but at the same time excited about starting up a new program in February at Ann’s Place in Danbury to help those whose lives have been touched by cancer.

So my activities have been around putting the finishing touches on different therapeutic spaces at my new facility in Danbury as well cleaning up after all the storms we have experienced.

At Ann’s Place I just finished planting 3,400 alliums and daffodils in the front of the facility. While that seems like a daunting number of bulbs it provides only the most basic of foliage and flowers when all emerge from the ground. I planted the bulbs in three different layers: Daffodils eight inches down, medium-sized alliums four inches down and tiny allium bulbs 2 inches below the surface. The hope is that they will spring up between April and August giving clients and staff a nice display as they enter our facility.

We have also installed nearly 200 ferns as well as hemlocks and American hollies around a picnic area with benches and a table. I am hoping that staff as well as clients can use this area for reflection and support. I planted many Christmas ferns around one holly as a holiday focal point. Hopefully next year it will be in full bloom.

Walkways and winter rye have finished the job for this season so I can focus on building a program this winter.

Working around the garden at home has been another story; it’s been more work than therapy. I have always tried to approach garden work with a Zen-like serenity and enjoy the moment. This year, unfortunately, that has not always been the case as combinations of illness, accidents and natural gotcha’s have delayed and added to the many garden tasks.

This last month was focused on getting ready for winter. As I burned up nearly one-quarter of my split wood supply keeping the house warm in early November, I spent quite a few days splitting more wood to just replenish my supply. Every day for a week and a half, I would go out to split oak and ash for an hour or so. Splitting wood has a rhythm that I enjoy. The picking up and splitting again and again of the same piece has a calming effect while I listen to the music of my back yard.

But I felt more stressed than relaxed as I felt that the weather could turn to the worse at any moment. Ironically, that was the furthest from the truth as this past November has been the mildest I can remember. There were quite a few days where my skinny bleached white legs exposed themselves to passers by. The lack of consistent hard frosts manifested itself through my cats picking up tick after tick during their outdoor forages. Gnats, mosquitoes and other flying vermin swarmed around my face and arms. For Thanksgiving I had more bug bites than servings of my favorite dessert.

The warm weather, however, permitted me to repair over 100 feet of fencing that had been damaged or downed by the two storms we have had this fall. It was warm enough to replace and set in concrete 10 new posts as well as reset existing posts that had not been felled. My local arborist dropped nearly 20 yards of wood chips for me to distribute and I spent the better of a week wheelbarrowing the chips to all the different beds needed to be refreshed. As I started the task, wisps of warm composting smoke rose from the top of the pile and continued until I knocked down its mass a bit.

Through all this I have been able to harvest salads nearly every other day as my cold frame and Agribon hoop house has kept the lettuces and Swiss Chard all the ready to eat. Even though the temperature hit a low of 22 degrees this week, all the different plants are doing well.

Now that I have finished all of my autumnal chores (with just days to spare to winter) I can now concentrate on the few things you can still do in the garden like harvest the remaining (and surviving greens), splitting wood as it gets used and starting to review the catalogs that start to come this time of year in preparation for the spring.

The sweet smell of students

 

A new semester recently started at Green Chimneys and with that a new group of students. Coming back after a month’s absence (a two week vacation and two hurricanes) its time to get into the fall chores and get to learn about a new group of students. This fall’s group will be bittersweet, like the season, as I will only be working with them through Thanksgiving. After that I will be taking a break until the spring and then hopefully back with the kids.

But until then there is lots to do in the garden. Today should be spent taking down the tomato plants, which have given up the ghost to leaf spot and weather conditions that vacillated between desert and flood. One of my new charges, Ben, was happy to have gotten the job and wanted to be a good worker.

“I will be a good worker for you, Mr. Keller. That way I can earn my money.”

So we started slow, cutting the stalks off the diseased plants. I showed Ben two different examples of tomatoes: one that had a healthy vine and the other with one that was diseased. At first he couldn’t articulate the differences but a bit of prodding got him on the right track.

My next student, Bill, was more observant but he told me he had never eaten a tomato before. “Bill you must have eaten tomatoes before in some form. Do you like Italian food?”

“I love spaghetti,” he replied. “Well tomatoes are often used in the sauce,” I said. I then picked up a basil leaf that we plant in between the tomato plants and rubbed the basil under his nose. “Do you know this smell?”

“I think so but I don’t know from where,” he said. “How about pizza?” I then told him to rub the basil under his nose and eat a cherry tomato at the same time. He looked at me strangely but then ate the fruit. He started to smile and agreed that it tasted like pizza and the tomatoes were really good. (I felt as if I was having a “Green Eggs and Ham,” moment with him.") I told Bill that he could eat as many of the cherry tomatoes that he wanted to. With that incentive he started to prune with greater urgency, taking a tomato every time he cut off a stalk and placed it into a garbage bag (we throw out all diseased plants rather than put them into the compost heap.)

My next student was off at a special meeting so I walked back to the garden. When I got there a pack of pre-schoolers were walking around with their teachers looking at the garden. I asked them if they would like to do something special and they all said yes.

I walked them around one of the corners of the herb garden by our large patch of wooly thyme. I then told them to take both of their hands, rub the thyme and then smell their fingers. They first couldn’t get enough of rubbing as the soft, wool-like plant tickled their fingers. Then they smelled their fingers and started to giggle.

Next to the wooly thyme is our mint patch so I broke off a stem and gave a leaf to each child and told them to smell it. “It smells like gum,” said one. “Yeah, can we eat it?” asked another.

I told them that they could and then I broke off a small branch and started to tickle each of their noses. “Tickle my nose again!” insisted a small, bespeckled girl.  I have never had such a receptive audience. I then showed them sunflowers, one that was pollinated and the other that was not, and explained how seeds were make. I cut open each flower showing them the difference between the two.

“You see each of these holes? Each used to hold a seed as was a little bed. Each seed could grow into a plant that was this tall, “ I said pointing as some of our sunflowers that were 10 feet high. The children were amazed that such a tiny seed could grow into a much larger plant. I gave each child a seed and told them to put it into the ground next spring. Each held out a tiny hand wanting a seed. I placed one in each hand and hoped that it was not the only seed that would bear fruit in the future.

The old bamboo

At Green Chimneys I have a pretty packed day: eight sessions with 11 students between 9 am and 3 pm once a week. Though Tracy thought I was mad to agree to such a schedule, I had a simple reason: I rarely ever get to deliver all the sessions. Between absences, doctor appointments, special events, etc. someone is always dropping out.

Last week I found myself with some time on my hands and I didn’t feel like weeding (I had spent the previous day doing that in my garden.) Next to the barn there was a pile of bamboo that Tracy had ordered to build some trellises for squash and frames to net the corn. A few scraps were on the side. I picked a scrap up and for some reason wondered if I could build a flute.

So I took out my Swiss Army knife and started the process. I opened the saw and cut off an end so that the stick was about a foot long with one end open and the other end plugged. I brushed off the end against the ground and opened up an awl that was on the knife. I picked a random spot near the plugged end of the bamboo and started to apply pressure. By turning the awl back and forth, a hole started to form. Soon I had a hole that was large enough to blow across.

I put on my best flautist face and blew. Nothing. Perhaps a few fingering holes would help. After I bore in a few holes I took another shot at it. Nothing. As I had no idea what I was doing, I wasn’t too bothered. I then looked up.

One of the boys in Tracy’s class had quietly walked over to me and was staring at me and my “flute.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m attempting to make a flute.”

“Does it work?”

“Let’s see.”

I then gave the flute my biggest blow and best sour-lemon face. Out of the end a loud, ear-splitting shrill noise emerged. I had built a flute. I then plugged the far end with my finger and a different sound emerged.

“That is so cool,” said Ted. “Can I make one?”

By that time the other boys in Tracy’s class had defected over to my patch of the garden and were also interested. “How about me? “And me,” said two other boys. I looked over to Tracy and she shrugged her shoulders. So I told the boys we could all make a flute but we would have to do it one at a time as I had only a single knife. I then told them to select a piece of bamboo.

“But think about what you want because the larger the piece of bamboo you choose, the lower the sound will be for the flute you make.”

One student asked, “Why is that?” So I then started to talk to them about the physics of sound and why some noises have a high pitch while others do not. I worked with each of them to build a flute while I explained the principle of how a flute worked. They were careful as I showed them how to use a knife and were quiet and patient as we built different flutes. By the end of class everyone had a flute in hand and smile on their face. No one cared that the sound was that good, but they were all able to get a tweet out of their homemade flutes.

After they left I apologized to Tracy for Shanghaiing her class. “Oh no. What you did was great. You were teaching them to be careful. Giving them math lessons as well as music. It was great. Anyway there was lots of male bonding going on and I can’t compete with that. So why try?”

I thanked Tracy for her understanding and looked at the pile of bamboo next to the table. I picked out a nice piece for myself and thought I would have another go at it during the week. Perhaps I will be able to make something that humans, rather than dogs can hear.

Fungus among us

While July was hot and dry, June was not and set the seeds (or spores) of one of our current activities at Green Chimneys: trimming diseased branches and leaves off the tomato plants. Tomatoes are one of the favored fruits of summer as there is nothing quite so tasty as a fresh tomato that has ripened on the vine. Unfortunately, for the last three years we have had a constant battle with Septoria leaf spot and every year I have endeavored with my charges to control the problem.

A few weeks ago I told a group of young boys that we would be cutting the leaves off the tomato plants. Initially they seemed uninterested until I asked them if they liked salsa.

“Yeah! That’s one of the best things about the summer garden. Will we be getting salsa soon?” said Bob.

“Well I hope so,” I replied. “But only if all of these green tomatoes are able to turn red. And they won’t turn red unless the tomato plant that is holding them lives for at least a month more.”

I then showed them a diseased leaf. It was brown on the edges and had little dots all over.

“This leaf is infected with a fungus that will kill the tomato plant unless we stop it. Look at some of the wilted leafs at the bottom of that tomato plant,” I said pointed downward.

They all looked and saw a bunch of desiccated brown leafs hanging off the metal cage. There were also small shriveled branches hanging off the bottom of the plant.

“Does that look healthy?” I asked. They all shook their heads no.

So I told them that we needed to cut off all the sickly looking branches as well as collect the dead leaves on the ground and instead of putting them into the compost heap, we needed to throw them out. When I asked them why did we need to do that Bill spoke up,” Because if you put them in with the compost you will just be planting them again next year.” Smart kid.

I gave each of them a set of pruners and they quickly set off to do the work. I said that our goal was to finish a single row of tomatoes and they set off quickly to do their job. Unlike other weeding exercises, this time the boys worked quickly and carefully. Perhaps the prospect of not getting salsa was motivating them to work hard; perhaps my promise of carrots and early tomatoes if they did a good job was a more immediate incentive.

In their enthusiasm a few healthy branches were cut, but as they were not bearing any fruit, I told them that it didn’t really matter that they were cut. After each plant was tended to, I wiped down each of their tools with alcohol to remove any spores that lingered on the blades. After 30 minutes of work, the row was nearly done.

“Gentlemen you have done a great job and probably saved this row so we will be able to make salsa in a month or so. Give yourselves a pat on the back,” I said. “Look at the difference.”  For the few plants that had not been trimmed, the dead, shrunken leafs were a bleak counterpart to the thinned out albeit airy bottoms of the plants that had been cut. The boys seemed pleased.

“OK now it is time to shop. Carrots first or tomatoes?” The boys had big smiles on their faces and decided to go for the tomatoes first.  

Cutting flowers, exposing memories

Part of the practice of horticultural therapy is to help clients work through or at least realize their challenges. Before you can begin to do that, particularly for emotional or social issues, you must first gain the trust of your client. In working with the children at Green Chimneys I have found that one of the easiest ways to do that is to tap the skills from my former profession as a consultant and be a good listener. And one way to do that is by striking up conversations during quiet, intimate tasks.

That happened last week as the chives had bloomed and the flowers needed to be cut to preserve the bulb. As one of my charges said the day was, “cloudless but windy but very comfortable.” So we had ideal conditions to just kneel down and snip the heads off the flowers. It didn’t matter how much of the chive flowers we cut but to make it more challenging and precise I had all the students snip them toward the top of the stem where the flower sat. This would force them to concentrate and consider the job rather than just flail away indiscriminately.

While many of the puff-ball-like flower heads were starting to go to seed, others were still fresh and attracting bees. But after I told my charges that they need not worry about the bees they ignored them and went along their business. After a short time, the onion-like smell of the stalks and flowers coated our hands so our aroma had changed for the day. It was pungent though pleasant and (to me at least) soothing.

One student Bob started speaking about his summer and the trips he would be going on with his mother and step-father. He then started to speak about his grandfather. “I don’t ever want to meet my grandfather. He’s a bad man.” He then started to talk about how his grandfather (as well as his father) was an alcoholic and would beat his father.  “My mom doesn’t drink.”

While Bob was talking about his family he spoke in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. He clipped the flowers carefully, dropping them into a tote and continued to tell me his story. “They could have stopped drinking if they wanted to. It’s all their fault. They are bad.”

“Bob, alcoholism is a disease that never leaves you, even if you stop drinking. Yes, perhaps they could stop drinking but it is not easy and a constant battle. I’m sorry that their actions hurt you.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Bob. “They are not part of me or my Mom’s life.” Bob didn’t seem to want to talk any more so we silently finished removing the flowers from the clump of chives we were in front. Bob did such a good job I let him harvest the first of the strawberries as a treat as well as a few gooseberries. “This was a good day,” he said as I took him back to class.

Judy, my next student, had a different reaction around the chives. She was working along side other students in a group that I was managing and became very possessive about cutting a certain number of flowers. “These are mine!,” she said. So I gave her a wide berth and let her cut the flowers. She did a good job sometimes lingering and looking at the individual blooms while delicately holding them in her hand.

I later took her aside and asked why she had become so possessive. “I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to have my own space and do it on my own.”

One of the my last students, Josh, was making quick work of the job. He cut the heads closely and quickly. He discovered that flowers that had mostly gone to seed were easy to pull off the stalks. “Is it ok if I pull them rather than cut them?”

I replied yes but he had to make sure that the flower was past. I demonstrated to him the difficulty in trying to pull off a live flower verses the relative ease in removing a seed pod. He nodded and then said, “These smell like stink bugs.”  I didn’t know the type of bug he was referring to so I asked him to describe one to me. He then started to look bothered and said that he didn’t want to. I asked why.

“They live in the country where I was born. It’s not a nice place. I don’t want to remember anything about it.”

“Would you like to talk about this?”

“No because if I do I won’t be able to stop and I want to forget about ever coming from there.”

Josh was now agitated. I needed to change the topic. “Josh, how would you like some strawberries?” His face immediately brightened. “Is there any asparagus left?”

“Yes I think so and there may be some gooseberries for you also.”

His face brightened with a big smile so we picked up our pruners, knee pads and tote of chive flowers and walked toward the shed to put them away. “Do you think I could have two strawberries, Mr. Keller?”

“Sure, Josh,” I replied. “If you can find two ripe ones.” He ran off toward the strawberry patch in front of me, forgetting the chives and thinking about the strawberries that he hoped to find.

Food for harvest

 

Things are looking up at Green Chimneys. The greenhouse should be reopened soon and first harvest is upon us. At home, we have been harvesting nine different greens (mizuna, romaine, VIT, miner's lettuce, dandelions, red leaf, spinach, arugula, sorrel) for salads every day. Most of these greens were planted last fall and somehow survived the tough winter. The same can be said of the mustard greens we planted in the Row for the Hungry last fall. We put a small hoop house over the row and it held off the snows of last season. We we peeled off the Agribon last month, the greens had just come out of their dormancy. Now a month later, they have started to bolt.

Jeff and I started to remove the leaves from the stems so Tracy could deliver them to the food pantry later today. Jeff was attentive though a bit melancholy. His uncle had died yesterday and he spent much of the time talking about all the things he and his father had found in the house. "He has a 2002 Chevy that we are going to take home," he said. "We are going to store it in the back yard and I will be getting kit when I turn 18." Jeff is all but 11 today.

Jeff carefully picked each leaf off and asked how the leaves were used to make mustard, which he favors on hot dogs. I told him that the leaves are used for salads while the seeds are ground into mustard. "See the little yellow flower. That will form a seed, which can then be made into mustard."

In the place of the greens we will plant some rows of lettuce and perhaps radishes if we have room. The other plants we had put in three weeks ago are doing well some of which will be ready for harvest in a couple of weeks.

Jeff slowly and methodically pulled the leaves from the stems. “Can I eat one,” he asks. No problem, I reply. As he bites into the leaf he makes a face and spits out the leaf. Too bitter.  He goes back to the harvest. We collect a large pile of mustard greens that weighs two pounds and put it in the refrigerator so it can be delivered later to the food pantry in Brewster.

Going home to New Jersey

Working at Green Chimneys is full of paradoxes. One of the biggest ones that I don’t understand is the rationale behind the rule that staff are not allowed to discuss the entire life cycle of animals, particularly when they die. On a farm, life and death is common. Animals get sick and die, chickens that lose the ability to lay eggs productively become tomorrow’s dinner, cows and pigs once they reach a certain age or weight are taken off to slaughter. 

But such realities are not to be reflected in our teachings. I once made the mistake in discussing with a GC staff member a scene in the Michael Moore movie, “Roger & Me,” where a poor resident of Flint, MI, was selling rabbits for “Pets or Meat.” A child nearby overheard our discussion and went into a massive crying fit. We eventually calmed down the child and I felt guilty about upsetting the boy. While many of the animals we have at Green Chimneys are viewed as pets and part of therapy, the other more final use is the true reason for the existence of most farms.

After some reflection, I started to feel sorry for all the children as they were being shielded from the reality of the human use of animals for food. After all its not tofu nuggets, mushroom burgers and veggyloaf that gets fed to the children in the cafeteria. And everyone loves cheese. Green Chimneys is far from a meat-free zone. Often, the more meat, the better.

The absurdity of this was revisited last week as I was having lunch with some colleagues. “”We don’t have room for all of them in the barn,” said one farm worker.

“I’m not sure what we will do with the carcass,” said another.

I quickly discovered that something killed one of the sheep the prior evening. There were no visible footprints or scat but the consensus was either a large dog or coyote of which there are many in the area, killed the sheep. Now that this predator knows that there are easy pickings, we needed to protect the flock. So instead of leaving them out in the fields, they will be brought in every evening to be protected.

“So how did the kids take it?” I asked.  I was given a sharp look and told that the children never will know.

“We tell them that it [the sheep] went home to a farm in New Jersey,”  said one of the farm hands. “That’s our standard line.”

“But the kids are getting smart,” said another. “They have figured out that anytime someone ‘goes home to New Jersey’ it means that they have died.”

This was really weird. Images of Jimmy Hoffa next to some dead ungulates sprang to mind. “OK horsey, if you won’t talk, it’s a concrete feed bag for you.”

But the biggest missed opportunity was our inability to create a positive and impactful lesson from this nasty event. Instead we are having to hide everything.

As I left the cafeteria, I started to think of Charlton Heston and Edger G. Robinson in the movie “Soylent Green.”  It’s a old science-fiction movie about a 2022 Earth that is overpopulated and barely able to feed itself. Soylent Green is one of the main food stuffs of the era and purportedly is made from plankton. Robinson, tired of life leaves a note for Heston stating that he is “going home,” a euphemism for assisted suicide.  Heston follows the body of his old friend through a processing sequence discovering the dark secret that “Soylent Green is people!”

I felt like following that train of thought by screaming, “Mutton is sheep!.” But I didn’t and went back to the garden less worried about the mixed message we send out to our children and more worried about covering up some tender vegetable seedlings as we were expecting a very cold evening.

Stalling out

We have started to settle into a new regime with new digs between a donkey and a camel. The stalls are rather spacious though the smell of dung lingers until acclimation sets in. Tables are set up and we have started to decorate. Our berths now are dedicated to "Man-O-Melon" and "Peabiscuit," our vegan view of equine champions. The children are still not sure why we are going to work where the mother-load of all fertilizer is manufactured.

"Why are we going to the stables, Mr. Keller? Are we picking up some plants? Do we get to see the horses?"

It has yet to sink in for many that we will not be working in the greenhouse for the foreseeable future at Green Chimneys, though as I mentioned in a prior post, our days working in the greenhouse were shrinking to begin with. But it has some real ramifications.

We have tons of cold weather crops like kale, azuma, broccoli, lettuce, peas, etc. that are being planted now. What we don't have are the warm weather flowers like marigolds and zinnias as well as vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, melons, and basil. We think we can just start enough stuff so that we will have the basics for the garden but none of the extras that we have all become accustomed to.

But like locust, unexpected snow, hail and other natural disasters, the new one defined by OSHA is being dealt with. We have started to plant basil and parsley. We have heat mats and lamps set up in the tack room where seedlings grow among the equipment that gets pulled for the dozen plus horses that berth nearby.

As the day warmed up (and the local aroma became more pungent,) we transferred out activities outside. We spent the last week erecting more hoop houses and planted whatever cold weather crops we could. Things are being placed outside much earlier (and smaller) than in the past but we have little choice. It matters little, however, as the children enjoy being in the garden, getting their hands soiled and picking a stray carrot that was planted last fall.