GroHappy

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.

Weeding out anger

My first realization that gardening could have a therapeutic effect was over a decade ago when I worked at a company called Gartner. At Gartner I would analyze different companies, software products and technologies each day to render dozens of judgments with either a thumbs up or down. By the end of the work day my nerves would be frayed and my disposition tense. Even a 45 minute drive home would not be enough to soothe the savage beast within as decisions would be revisited and work would continue via cell phone conference calls.

One of the ways I returned to the human race was to spend time in the garden even before I would see my wife and children. After pulling the car into the garage, I would look over the vegetables, pull a few weeds and water plants in need of a drink. Better them than me. As I spent more time in the garden, the stress and pressure of the work day would disappear like so many dandelion seeds blowing in the wind. Within 20 minutes I was renewed and could be a good husband and father.

I often reflect back on those days when confronted by a child who is angry or upset when they come to the garden. At Green Chimneys letting a child come to work in the garden is a reward for good behavior. But I think sometimes we forget that it can be the salve that can heal broken feelings and pain.

Whenever I pick a child up from class, I ask them how they feel and how their week is progressing. Often the response is quiet indifference but occasionally a child will let loose.

“I’m really pissed off,” said Peter last week to me.

“What’s the matter?”

“My friends are leaving and I hate it.” Two of Peter’s friends were leaving the school and Peter was feeling alone and upset. He just wanted to hit something.

“Peter I know how you feel as friends have moved away from me. But it is part of growing up and will happen again to you.”

He nodded but couldn’t help choke back some tears.

As Peter likes to do physical work I decided to tackle a fairly hard weeding job where we needed to pull large tuffs of crabgrass, mint and other thickly rooted weeds that resided against the fence near the gooseberry and raspberry patches. It was a physically exhausting job as the roots would not give up the soil in their grasp easily.

“Peter try to transfer your pain and anger to the weeds. Every time you feel bad, send your feelings to the plant that is giving you a hard time. Trust me, it will make you feel better.”

As Peter started his job, he didn’t really get into it but rather stood around looking out past the meadow where our sheep graze toward some nearby foothills.

“Come-on Peter. Put your back into it,” I called out. “Get to work.”

With that nudge, Peter started to work. First slowly and then with more gusto. Soon he was digging, prying and pulling up weeds filling our wheelbarrow taking only a break when it filled and needed to be emptied into the compost heap. He grabbed a tuff of crabgrass and with all of his strength pulled back, hard against it. He first started to liberate it from the soil with a little tear before a larger rip followed along with an explosion of soil.

“Wow! Look at this Mr. Keller!” he said holding up a mass of green weeds.

Other clumps were beyond his strength alone and together we pulled the recalcitrant plants from the ground. He seemed to enjoy working next to me. Before he knew it, our time was over; he was a sweaty mess and it was time to clean up.

“Are we done? Can’t we keep going?,” he asked.

“I’m sorry Peter, but it’s time to get you back to class. How do you feel?”

“Much better. That was great.”

We both smiled at our accomplishment. As a reward, Peter got a piece of lemon leaf and one of our first ripe strawberries. A small stream of sweet juice leaked out of his mouth as he chomped down on the large very red berry.

“Can we do this next week?” he asked.

“I’m sure we can Peter. There will always be weeds to pull.”

My mother’s greening thumb

  As I mentioned in a prior post, my mother has started to become more active in her garden. About a week ago we chatted and I asked her if there were any signs of the lipstick tulips that we had planted last fall.

“Why yes, Erik. They are flowering and look wonderful.”

As our tulips were just beginning to poke their way out of the soil, I should have not been surprised as the gardens in Long Island are always a month or so ahead of those at our home in Ridgefield, CT. So it was obvious that I needed to come down to help my mother get the garden going. When I suggested it, she was pleased and looked forward to my visit.

A few days later we went to a local nursery for annuals but only pansies and early-season vegetables were available. It was too early for begonias and impatiens, which we had planted last year and had done wonderfully well. My mother loves pansies, but because of her medical conditions can’t bend down enough to deadhead the plants after they flower. So between the lack of sun (as they were on the north side of the house) and the lack of maintenance, her pansies did poorly last year. We decided to pass on the annuals for at least the time being and just purchased some pine chips and dehydrated manure to dress up her garden as well as some grass seed to patch some bare spots on the lawn.

When we got home, we took a walk around the garden to look at her tulips. She became upset as around a third of the tulips were spent. “What happened? They were fine a few days ago,” she said.

“I’m not sure Mom, but it seems you have visitors,” I replied pointing at a topped off tulip stem that was likely removed by a rabbit. She looked a little disgusted but resigned to the fate of the flowers.

Getting my mother out in the garden has been great therapy for her as she now has an activity that takes her outside and gets her to walk and extend her limbs. After we looked at the tulips I told her that some needed deadheading so that they would have a more robust bloom next year. I gave her a set of pruners and got her to clip off the developing seed heads. It was a bit difficult for her, but provided a good stretch for her arms and back.

We then went to the front yard and saw all the different plants emerging that we had planted last year: astilbes, hosta, muscari, lilies, ferns, bleeding hearts and coral bells. She could not believe that anything was coming back as in prior years her spaces would always be barren come spring. Because we amended the soil last year, the recently dormant plants were doing well. I applied a good helping of manure and compost around the plants and then covered the spaces between the plants with fresh wood chips. When we were at the nursery my mother thought I was buying too many bags of wood chips for the beds. As it turned out, I was one short. My mother watched attentively waving her cane at spaces that didn’t get covered properly or at ones that she felt I had covered with too much material. It was comforting to see her at my side.

With the garden now dressed out, we needed to seed the lawn’s bare spots. My mother has arthritis and has a difficult time holding items. To help her, I put the grass seed in an unused cookie tin so she could grab small handfuls easily. I then demonstrated to her how to broadcast it. We would work together as a team: I would rake the bare spots to disturb the soil and she would throw down the seed.

We made our way around the yard looking for spots devoid of grass. She would walk over to one place and then backtrack to another. The day became warm and sunny making it a nice way to spend time with her outside.

1. After we had finished with the seed we took a final walk around the house. The rose bush I had discovered last year in the back of the house was robustly sending up new shoots around the trellis I put up and the Japanese maple planted near the house had survived the winter and was growing well. I will need to transplant that in the next few years.

My mother noticed the old garden bed next to the house where my father used to plant tomatoes. It was weedy with dandelions, crabgrass and a dead weeping willow that my wife and I had given them many years ago.

“That really looks horrible,” said my mother. “We should do something.”

“Well Mom, we can just pull everything out and leave it for the grass to take over or we could start another flower garden.”

“Let me think about it,” she replied as she started her way back into the house but not before noticing a random group of daffodils that recently emerged near the back corner of the garage.

When students damp off

The idea for this blog and GroHappy are founded on three main principles:

• Happy people are more important than perfect plants
• All gardening/nature activities should be joyful
• There are no failures in the garden

This last point is very important as students (and teachers) can learn and grow from observing the complex interactions between plants and nature. If you are honest with your self, you come to accept that the garden is full of unanticipated surprises, both good and bad. While this point has never been lost on me after playing in the garden for decades, it has been harder to accept as a fledgling horticultural therapist.

My success stories, which have been written about on this blog, are also counterbalanced by those with less uplifting conclusions. I’m not discussing random incidents when a child becomes recalcitrant or willful. Nor events in the garden when a student decides they don’t want to work in the garden in a given day. Or when a crop fails (see GroHappy rule three.) Such happenings are part of the ebb and flow of the mentor/student relationship that comes with the territory. But there are a few times when students will damp off, much like some of the spinach I planted less than a month ago.

One of my favorite students is Seymour, whom I wrote about in a prior post. Seymour is an unusually bright child with a variety of challenges that Green Chimney’s is addressing. We had hit it off from the start as he was in love with carnivorous plants and I have pretty good knowledge of them as I propagate them. This joint interest formed an initial bond and intense working relationship unlike that I had had with other children. Seymour was driven: it seems that nothing was too challenging for him as we worked through the garden with a variety of chores. His end goal: a carnivorous plant that he could call his own.

This hard work and good behavior culminated in his receiving a South African sundew plant after working successfully with me for three months. I remember his pride and happiness when I gave him the plant and built a shelf for him in his room so he could place it near a window. Seymour was doing really well and appeared responsible enough to take care of an exotic plant. It pleased me to be able to give Seymour this reward.

Then something happened. Seymour changed.

After the New Year, I couldn’t work with Seymour anymore as he had become a discipline problem. I would go to pick him up in class and he would not be there. “Seymour is having some problems,” I was told. “He can’t garden today.”

This continued for the rest of January until I was ready to leave for vacation. When I came back, Seymour was worse and had been transferred to a class for students with more intense challenges. No more jobs for Seymour. No more gardening.

I see Seymour on campus and every time he comes up to me asking, “Mr. Keller, when are you coming to pick me up for my garden job?”

“You don’t have a garden job anymore Seymour.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me. A gardening job is a privilege. Have you been behaving in school, staying out of trouble so you can be rewarded with a job?” Silence. “And what happened to the sundew I gave you? That was your baby.”

“They took it away from me.”

“Well there must have been a good reason Seymour. But I’ll make a deal with you, if you can turn things around, do your schoolwork, take care of your room and get along with your fellow students, I will then see if you can get back your old job.”

We have this conversation every week. For now, Seymour is not getting any better.

While this is the most extreme example, there are other smaller ones reminding me of the children’s fragility. A few weeks ago, George and I had been planting peas. Everything seemed fine; he worked well in the garden and was happy to be doing such a great job. A few hours later I found him curled up leaning against a wall crying inconsolably while two adults were trying to bring him out of it. Another student I recently started with missed his last two sessions; I discovered that he needed to be taken to an acute-care facility.

One of the wonderful aspects of horticultural therapy is that it takes its participants to very different places. The garden is a healing place that gives children a different and positive place to learn and grow.  Every so often, however, I am reminded that life is no garden for all of my children. 

Feed me Krelborn, feed me now!

Whenever you start working with a new child, there is often a mutual sizing up that occurs. You look over the child in the attempt to determine the best course of therapy. They look you over to determine what type of person you are and if you are worth the effort. There are some instances, however, where you can take an obsession and turn it into a motivating factor that will help the child in therapy.

I ran into such a child a few months back. He was new to the school and was having a difficult time finding his groove. When I had a slot open up for a new student, Tracy and Allie (who run the HT program at Green Chimneys) both said that he would be a good match for me but I had to watch out as he was obsessed with carnivorous plants.  For me this was a serendipitous coupling as I have started to propagate them at home. A few months before I had brought by a variety of sample for the students at the school to look at and examine.

I fell in love with Nature’s own bug zapper when I went to California for a wedding a few years back and had the opportunity to visit California Carnivores, which specializes in these little meat eaters.  After reading the owner’s book, The Savage Garden, I was hooked.

So the first time that I met with the student it took all of three minutes before he started to tell me that he wanted to work in the garden with carnivorous plants and did I know anything about them.

“Why yes, Seymour (not his real name) I know a lot about carnivorous plants. In fact, I grow them.”

With that his eyes went wide and wanted to talk about nothing except carnivorous plants. We chatted for about 10 minutes and then I told him that it was time to go to work.

“But I don’t want to work. I want to talk about carnivorous plants with you.”

“I’ll make a deal with you Seymour. If you work well with me, follow directions, and do your job, I’ll give you a carnivorous plant after Thanksgiving.”

His eyes went wide again. “My own plant? But how will I take care of it?”

“I’ll teach you and I will give you a plant that is easy to take care of. You can have a Cape Sundew.”

These sundews are like weeds as they self-seed with abandon. I started out with one a year ago and now have over a dozen. They have become a favorite with my wife in the kitchen as their little leaves have sticky orbs of mucilage that trap and consume insects. Since they have made a home in our kitchen, we have had no bugs of any kind flying around. The kitchen sundews went from being the size of my finger to the size of my fist. I figure Seymour will have similar success.

So with that deal, Seymour became the perfect student. Everything we worked on together, he did with enthusiasm and care. He wanted to talk a lot about different types of carnivorous plants, and when we had an opportunity we did. I started to teach him about how a carnivorous plant needs to be watered (with either distilled or rain water) and be kept moist (in a water tray) and their temperature requirements (sundews are warm weather plants that do not require dormancy whereas Venus fly traps and pitcher plants do require a cold-weather dormancy period.) These discussions were just background chatter, however, to the lesson of the day, which he picked up very quickly.

Every day I’m with Seymour, he talks about getting his plant and tells me how good a job he plans to do that day. Even when he is a bit off and not wanting to work, the thought of getting his own plant motivates him enough so that he gets on with the job and is successful.

I’m looking forward to giving him a plant in a month and just to keep him going I promised to teach him how to propagate Venus fly traps this spring when they emerge from dormancy. That’s the plant he really wants.

Horticultural therapy in the news

Last week my local newspaper ran this item about a group called Ability Beyond Disability. The group, which provides vocational training and employment for those with autism and other disabilities, purchased a rose farm that was going to close. It has started to sell its wares through a local supermarket, Stew Leonard’s, and plans to hire 25 people with autism and other disabilities at the farm.

Horticulture can have a powerful effect on those with autism, many of which suffer from movement and sensory difficulties. All the senses can be stimulated in a powerful and constructive fashion. The physical effort required provides a means of exercise and can be metered to the capabilities of any person. Touching plants, “smelling the roses,” looking at a variety of bright colors can evoke wonderful feelings and stimulate different senses. Working with others in a group makes the job more pleasurable and increases interactions and friendships.  But perhaps most important aspect of this type of work is that by having a job, those with autism can be successful and contribute in a positive way on their own. This gives them dignity and a great deal of increased self-worth, which are counter to a life that can be tightly controlled and managed. 

Here is a story about Thresholds, a Chicago-based group that uses employment-oriented horticultural therapy to help those with mental illness become more in tune with society. Thresholds has “a flower shop in the Loop that involves our members and horticulture therapy; I've seen some of the member there change from people who could not look at you in the eye [or get to work] turn into vibrant, terrific people who are now coming into their own,” said Thresholds board member Ron Grais.

And the Daily News writes about this school-yard program that gets local children into gardens to see how vegetables and other plants grow.