GroHappy

Funky smells

With a second try at a class on sachets, I got a much better turnout. Before we started to make our sachets, we went for a walk in the daffodil garden, where nearly 4,000 daffodils are planted. As we walked into the area a few clients commented on the sweet smell as we walked up the stairs to the trail. “Around the walkway we planted fragrant daffodils so you would have both sight and smell stimulated as you started to explore the area.”

The group of us just stood in the garden, quiet, appreciating the day that nature had given us. After a few minutes we made our way to the art room and started to make spring sachets. My clients had 15 different herbs, flowers and spices as well as a dozen different fragrant and essential oils to choose from. “When you do aromatherapy you always use essential oils, which come directly from the plant. Fragrant oils are chemically distilled and much less expensive. For instance, this rose oil I have costs only $5 as a fragrant oil; its essential counterpart is priced at over $200.”

Everyone was a bit shocked at the price difference but understood the reasons why after I explained how oils are distilled from the plant. As I had them smell some of the different oils I asked if any had strong feelings about scents. One client spoke of cinnamon breads her father used to make around Easter and that cinnamon always triggered that memory. But along with the pleasant comes the unpleasant. Skunk was a universal bad smell for the clients. They all knew and remembered the pungent and fetid aroma of skunks as well as dead animals on the side of the road.

The first part of the therapy was to decorate the sachet bag. One client was a little recalcitrant. “I’m not an artist. This won’t be good.” I assured her that whatever she drew would be fine and that it should be something that will make her happy. She shrugged and drew a delicate little flower.

The next stage, mixing the herbs and oils, was a little more complex as a few complained that I gave them too many choices. I told them to pick their favorite smell and build their sachet around that. Lavender was a favorite with over half my clients, but a few went a tad overboard in their use of oils.

“This is a really funky smell,” said one. “Is this right?” I put my nose into her mixture of five different herbs and was hit with a very sultry scent dominated by lavender with a hint of lemon. “How much oil did you put in your mix?” I asked.

“Oh about 3 or 4 or 5 drops. . .maybe 6,” she replied. I smiled.

“Ladies, one of the things you need to be careful about is your use of the oils. They are very powerful. Put one or two drops in. Mix everything up and then stick your nose into the mix. Then decide if you need more or have enough. If you do that, you will get a good idea of how your mix smells. All of the scents are powerful and you should add small, incremental amounts.

“As for you,” I said to my lavender client, “ Just leave your sachet out for a while rather than put it in a plastic bag. The lavender scent will dissipate and get to an intensity that you are comfortable with. As it fades, other scents will reveal themselves.”

She thanked me and took another whiff. “Perhaps I’ll just add another drop of two,” she mused acting like a cat enveloped in catnip. Others, even after my suggestion, leaned heavy on the oil dropper overwhelming their sachet with their scent of choice. Yet when everyone was done and passed around their crafts, all loved the smells created by their classmates.

The next day, I met the woman who had squirted lots of lavender into her sachet. “I just wanted to let you know that the sachet made my room smell wonderful.  Everything smelled like lavender and it was very relaxing,” she said with a big smile on her face. “It was fantastic.”

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.

Building a program—Part 1: Fighting the deer

Over the past 4 months or so I have been spending a lot of time at Ann’s Place working to build a series of therapeutic gardens. The first phase of this project is almost done after a series of delays that have been caused by the crummy weather we have had this past summer. In the early summer, we started work with the idea that we would be done by Labor Day. Not so much.

The first project was started last year when we tried to get a jump start on the season by planting 4000 daffodils, creating a nature path and planting two-thirds of our native bushes and trees that was part of a mitigation garden required by the town. It looked great in the fall when we planted it; not so much in the spring after the ungulate version of the Taliban decided to lay waste. Between them and the very dry July we had, over half of the plantings were killed and the other half severely pruned.

But as we discovered this, we were able to reclaim some of the surrounding landscape. Like much of Connecticut, the property was ringed with stone walls that had fallen into disrepair; the prior state of neatly stacked stones appeared more as piles of rubble. Fortunately we had a group of volunteer executives from one of our corporate sponsors that hungered for some heavy duty physical effort. We obliged them.

They were amazing as they did not work as executives often do, sitting down at a conference table munching a Danish while listening to a PowerPoint presentation. Rather they were hauling, prying, moving, wheel barrowing, grunting their way to move the rocks back into place that time, nature and people have moved about.

Within six hours they reclaimed over 400 feet of wall and must have moved 10 tons or more of stone. Not bad for free help.

There was another contingent that was less aggressive in their desires, which was great as I needed a group to weed and plant. I had to be careful with instructions for weeding as the site has a lot of Jack-in-the-pulpit planted as well as other wild flowers. But after a few mis-weeds, they followed instructions well and rid the path and site of crabgrass, garlic mustard and other invasives.

Those who didn’t weed helped plant up 80 ferns and 300 Blue Flag irises, which I used to stabilize a hill and fill in an area that is often wet.

But then came the rainy August and September, which stopped us in our tracks (and that of our outdoor contractors.) With over 25 inches of rain over 60 days if it wasn’t raining, it was drying out. Last week we were able to start anew.

We started by deciding to install over 400 feet of deer fence to create a Green Zone against the deer. Amazingly we were able to use existing trees and dig holes that avoided the vast amount of rock that exists around the site. I was worried that the black steel poles and plastic fencing would detract our view into the woods where a few winterberry and grey dogwoods among the barberry escaped the fate of hungry deer.

But once it was done, like the deer it was blocking, it minimized into the background with notice only when the sun shimmered on its profile. We now needed to start the grading and finish planting the rest of the trees. But most important, all the things we were about to plant would get at least a fighting chance from the deer.

Raking memories and leaves

I hadn’t raked leaves at my mother’s house for nearly 35 years. The yard service had done a final cut a few weeks back but since then it seemed as if all the neighboring trees had decided to give their leaves up to my mother’s lawn as a going away gift. Her trees—all oaks—have been stubbornly been hanging onto their charges not wanting to give up this year’s production. It was as if they decided that this was the season to wear a raccoon coat of foliage and no rain or wind would remove the slightest bit.

So as I looked upward at the future blanket for the lawn, I needed to deal with the neighbors’ leaves. There was an old rake missing a few teeth in the garage that my father used years ago before he turned over that duty to others and a pile of old plastic bags. I asked my mother to join me outside. To my surprise she did.

The straw-like zoysia grass was holding onto its blanket with more vigor than does my fescue at home. Perhaps it realizes that the trees above will not give them cover quickly leaving them to deal with the cold autumn winds for longer than they would like. Regardless, I pulled the leaves into large dumpling-shaped piles in the middle of the lawn. Now it was time to bag.

My mother walked out to take a look and I joked to her if she would like to jump into a pile. She laughed and said that was my pleasure of years ago. I thought back about that and remembered that the piles seemed so much larger then. My father and I would rake leaves into a heap that was as tall as me and then I would burrow inside as would a creature readying to hibernate for the season. It was warm and there was an unmistakably sour-sweet smell of decay.

But the piles have gotten smaller as I now towered over them not wanting to jump in but bag them so the town could haul them away to compost. At my home, I just rake the leaves into the woods. Job done. But in my mother’s manicured neighborhood, there is no such space and everything must be removed.

So I opened a bag, shook it out and placed it on the ground anchoring it with my feet and holding an edge while my other arm started to pull swaths of leaves into the bag. Like a piston, my arm mechanically swept the area until I needed to stop and rebuild the pile. Pulling the bag off the ground I shook it and then punched the leaves down, compacting them into a tight mass before repeating the exercise. My father taught this to me.

My mother was supervising the operation from the front step, sitting down carefully after she placed her cane next to her and a piece of cardboard under her as a cushion. I went over during a break and we reminisced about how my father used to feed the squirrels with walnuts from his hand. He would squat down in an seemingly impossible configuration with his knees high and his bottom low rhythmically bouncing while he would smack the walnuts (or filberts) together announcing his arrival.

Initially cautious, the squirrels took to my father (and his nuts) quickly. But they soon came to expect his attentions on a more frequent basis. If they perceived he was late they would come to the house and congregate on the stoop chastising my father that he wanting. And in a Pavlovian manner he would respond.

My mother and laughed. I handed her an acorn and went back to work.

Stairway to raspberries

I continue to be surprised at how adaptable and clever are the children I work with. Last week it was time to build a set of stairs in the hill that contains the raspberry bushes we planted this year. Last year my Green Chimneys students and I built the trellises between which we would string wires that would support the raspberry brambles. My students all had a great time being taken out of the usual garden chores and introduced to the new challenge of building something using different power tools.

Tracy and I had decided to construct stairs to make it easier to walk between the rows as well as minimize a ditch that was forming from the runoff created by the raised beds we had built last year. The good news about the upper garden is that it doesn’t flood as it used to; the bad news is that the water needs to go somewhere.

So with that in mind and some left over pressure-treated four by fours, we started to build the stairs. My first chore was to teach my students how to measure and use a level. One of the things I am constantly amazed at is the lack of what I would have considered elemental skills. But perhaps this is due to my childhood and how I brought up my girls. Like my father with me, whenever I had a job to do I had my girls, Kathryn and/or Sarah, help me with the simple things like measuring and seeing if the different timbers were level. By the age of six or seven they had mastered these skills and would make their own little constructions with scraps of wood that were left over from the job. One year when our television was being repaired, Sarah made a series of TV sets with squares of wood and nails for antennas and then created a TV show on the different sets.

The lack of skills of these children was not due to any inherent problem but rather the lack of training and exposure. My job was to fill in these holes. I held up the level for each child showing how the little bubble within a tube of liquid needed to rest between two thin lines in order for the level to be level. Most were able to pick up this skill fairly quickly. I still found that I needed to be more explicit with my instructions.

“Ellen, is it level?,” I said after setting in a timber.

“Yes it is,” replied Ellen holding the level up in the air with the bubble balanced perfectly between the two lines.

The job was simple and the kids got a big kick out of putting it together. We first used a pickaxe to channel out a hole that would support a footing beam. After making sure it was level, we created adjacent and perpendicular channels until we had a base that we could build upon. We then measured how long each timber needed to be and cut it with a chop saw. We then used a portable drill to pre-drill the holes for the spikes that would hold the timbers together. After nailing the timbers together, we hammered rebar on the sides and front to support and stabilize them. At the end we dumped in wheelbarrows of rocks as a base. Each child had a favorite job.

Ellen liked to use the pickaxe. She carefully used it to channel out wide grooves that the timbers would fit into. It took her a while to figure out how to make the grooves level, but she enjoyed the challenge and after a bit became quite exacting. Ben (and most the other boys) took to the drill. They all followed the same learning curve. I told them to press slowly and hold the drill with both hands so it would not torque out of their grip and possibly hurt them. They all ignored this and held it with one hand right before the tool spun out of control.

“Wow that is really strong,” said Ben. “Yes it is Ben. How do you think it is able to drill through wood so easily? Hold it with both hands and press the button gently.” After a few tries they all got it and we became a well-oiled team.

Measuring lengths of wood exposed the cognitive differences between the different children. I used measuring and a tape measure as a way to teach simple arithmetic.  Some children were able to use it for multiplication. Others were not able to read and understand simple numbers. Strangely, no one became frustrated as I helped them with simple counting get to the right place on the measuring tape.

The one area that their skills also varied in was hammering the spikes into the wood. Pre-drilling the timbers helped a bit, but we still needed to go through two inches of undrilled wood, which was a task even for me. Most of the children quit after they started to hit undrilled wood, though one child, Edward, was determined to hammer all of his spikes in. With each swing he became more determined even though the power he was able to auger was in decline. After smashing in two spikes he turned the hammer over to me with sweaty pleasure. “It’s your turn now Mr. Keller.”

So that is how it went the entire day as we worked our way from the bottom up. For all my charges, the day flew by and no one wanted to go back to class. They wanted to stay and finish the job. To me that is the best lesson that I can give them and showed me that sometimes the best job in the garden sometimes doesn’t include plants.

Developing skills when planting peas and hanging string

In late March it was pea planting time at Green Chimneys as Spring had come early to the garden.  One of the day’s tasks was to plant two rows of peas, each row about 60 feet long. Eventually I would need to hang strings on poles so the peas could climb. One of the challenges when working with children in this area is getting them to plant either seedlings or seeds at a consistent space and depth. While some may believe that this type of rigor is unneeded, I believe that part of horticultural therapy is to persuade the child to tap into his or her intelligence and skill. I have found that when you have high expectations in the garden, they will often be met.

This turned out to be the case when I worked with Sheila to plant peas. When you plant a pea, you need to plant it between 1/2- and 1-inch deep and around 2 inches apart so they do not crowd each other. As I have discovered over the years, most children do not have a good concept of inches and a ruler or tape measure is not a good alternative to use. So what I do is to fabricate a template or tool to help the child.

Looking around the ground I found the perfect tool—A stick, which would serve three purposes.

1) Make a hole.

2) Measure the depth of the hole.

3) Measure the space needed to plant the seeds.

I first cut the stick so that a branch nub was 1/2 inch from the end. By pushing the stick into the ground, Sheila could make a hole for a pea as well as understand how deep to push the stick. I also cut a notch into the stick that was two inches from its other end. I told Sheila that she needed to space the peas far enough apart so that one pea would touch the end of the stick and the other touch the notch.  She nodded and we started to plant.

With jobs like these, I let the child define the work and run the project. I become the helper and she the leader. What has been unusual when the traditional roles are reversed is that the child often wants to redefine the job to become more productive. For instance, when Sheila and I planted peas, I held the peas, she poked a hole in the soil, dropped a pea and then let me cover the pea up with soil.

She soon tired of this and decided instead to poke 10 holes at the same time, fill each with a pea and then move on. She also wanted to hold the peas, leaving me with nothing to do save put soil on top of each pea. With each 10 feet of row, she made subtle but time-saving changes in the job. By the end of our planting time together, I could barely keep up with her as she flew threw the effort and was ecstatic with her progress. We had planted 120 feet of peas in 40 minutes.

“I can’t believe we did all that work in such a short amount of time. That was fun,” said Sheila. 

The same was true a few weeks later. The peas had poked their shoots through the soil and would be ready to grab a string in the next few weeks.  It was time to build a trellis for the peas to latch onto. This exercise was a bit more time consuming as we had to lay out a line, wrap it and attach it to each pole and move on to the next one. Progress was compounded by the fact that the poles were 6 feet high and it was cumbersome to keep the string high and level.

Sheila didn’t make as much progress on this job as she was too short to do it by herself. Thus she depended on me much more than when she was planting peas and was not as inventive in discovering a better and faster way to lay out the lines. We only got lines done for half of one row. I needed to work with other children to finish the job.

One of the other children, Mike, threw himself into the job and discovered a better and faster way to lay out the lines. He formed loops and twisted the twine around the pole with a single deft motion. It was impressive to see him so motivated.

“This is the best thing we have ever done in the garden!” Mike exclaimed.

Ironically, Mike was shorter than Sheila but was able to come up with a more effective method of working. He turned his disadvantage into something he wanted to overcome rather than conquer him. Our time together flew by and before we realized, it was time to return to class.

Mike had done such a good job I rewarded him with a stalk of asparagus and a lemon leaf (sorrel.) He munched on them as we walked back to class happy in his success and looking forward to working in the garden next week.

Chilling greens

As I mentioned in a prior post, there still are tasty treats to pull from the garden if you can look beyond the surface. The same turned out to be true yesterday at Green Chimneys, which got whacked with snow as I did. Upon walking up to the garden with a student, I could see that we had a mixed bag going: some hoop houses collapsed entirely, some partially, and some held up well under the snow.

While the prior week in the garden had been sunny, warm and unseasonable, this one was sunny, cold and unseasonable. Almost the same. One of the challenges in working with children outside this time of year is to ensure that they are warm enough to do their jobs. I always bring with me a spare hat and pair of gloves in case they don’t, which is more often than not. When I picked up Charles (not his real name) and we headed out to the garden he asked why we were going out; after all everything had to be dead because of the snow.

“Why do you think that Charles?,” I asked. He replied that it was the winter and everything had to be dead, especially under the snow. I told him that he should hold his view on that until we finished our job this morning.

One of the most damaged hoop houses was the one we built for the local food pantry. We had run out of PVC piping so we fabricated one out of heavy-duty wire mesh during the fall. It had worked well so far even in high winds but 5 inches of snow and then a cold rain put too much weight upon it. It collapsed in the middle. I handed a shovel and a pair of gloves to Charles and told him that we had to shovel out the snow. “I don’t know how to shovel snow,” said Charles.

“We need to be gentle, “ I said. “Take your shovel and turn it on its side to that it is like a knife. Gently cut the snow and then turn your shovel so that you can pick up the chunk of snow that separates out. But you have to be careful so that we don't rip the cloth that is covering the plants. Watch me.”

I then demonstrated how to remove the snow. It took Charles a while to get a handle on it but he was taking his time and care so that he would not rip the cloth. As the snow was in packed chunks we created a game to see who could cut the largest piece. Charles won.

We soon removed all the snow and then pulled back the Agribon and wire to reveal our lettuce. It was still in great shape. “How is that possible?,” said Charles.

“It is possible Charles because we have put a blanket over the lettuce to keep it warm, just like the coat you are wearing is keeping you warm. How do you think you would feel now if you didn’t have a coat on?”

“Cold,” he said. “Right, so we need to put the blanket back on the lettuce to let it warm up,” I said. It was fairly early in the morning and the lettuce looked a bit desiccated so I didn’t want to harvest it until mid-day. We replace the Agribon.

“Charles, let’s clean off all the other hoop houses of snow and see if we can get even bigger chunks.” Charles loved that idea and we spent the rest of our time pulling snow off the hoops and comparing the size of snow chunks each of us were harvesting.

After we got a hoop cleared off, both Charles and I looked into the tunnels to see how our vegetables were doing. We had good luck as the oakleaf lettuce, kyona mizuna and turnip greens, spinach, Swiss Chard, cauliflower, and carrots were thriving in their little hoop homes. Even though it was only 35 degrees, Charles didn’t complain about the cold and we were out for nearly an hour working and having a great time.

By mid-day it was time to harvest as much as we could. The temperatures were supposed to hit 10 degrees during the night and I thought that the lettuce and a few other crops may not be able to handle such a drop. David (not his real name) was shocked but pleased that we would be harvesting greens for the pantry. He has great garden skills so he would be very helpful in cutting the lettuce low, thus giving it a chance to possibly grow back by late winter. Like Charles, David was shocked that there was still lettuce in the garden; unlike before when the lettuce was a bit flat, it was now fully hydrated and ready to be cut. David and I worked side by side chatting a bit but focusing on getting as much lettuce up as we could. He used the pruners expertly much like some of the  other children I recently worked with.

Unexpectedly David screamed, “Look, I found a worm!” I didn’t believe him but David proved me wrong as he lifted up a big fat earthworm that was on the surface of the earth. He soon found two more. It was hard to believe that worms would be up and about at this time of year but then I reconsidered the micro-climate we had created and the fact that the soil was warm under my fingers. Within 30 minutes we were able to harvest over 3 pounds of lettuce.

Since David had done such a good job I told him he could have a carrot. So he poked his head under the Agribon and searched for his “perfect” carrot; he was successful as he pulled out a fairly large one. “You know David, if you leave the carrots in the ground over the winter their starch turns to sugar and they get very sweet just like candy.” His eyes opened and he asked me if we could leave a few carrots in the ground so he could have one in the spring. I told him sure.

I had planned to finish the harvest with my last student of the day but he was unavailable as he had an off-campus activity. So it became my job to get kale for Tracy who wanted to make kale chips for the students. If I had any time left, I could also harvest the kyona mizuna.

As I pulled the Agribon off the hoops, I could feel a wave of heat emerge from the ground. I had to bend down and stretch across the bed as I didn’t want to expose more of the bed to the elements than I had to. It was an interesting contrast between my warm head and hands and my cold backside and feet, which were in the snow. Cutting the tender kale stems, I felt as I was in a different place as the smell of harvest pored over me.

I needed to work quickly as a chill hit: clouds were forming and the sun was setting. The mizuna was beginning to desiccate (a function of the cold) so l needed to finish. Within an hour I had harvested 4 pounds of kale and 3 pounds of mizuna.

Before I locked up the garden I inspected all the hoops. Some clips were missing, which I replaced, and a few pieces of duct tape patched up the odd hole or two. I’m hoping there will be more to harvest in the coming weeks, but I was happy to spend one more day in the garden with my students before retreating into the greenhouse as will be all too common in the months ahead.

Hole therapy

As is often said by politicos, “Never waste a good crisis.” In the garden, there is the analog, “Never waste hard labor.” As I said in my last post, we have spent the last few weeks installing raspberry trellises at the garden. Much of the work consists of the backbreaking digging of holes. But in every hole there is a lesson if you look hard or deep enough. Working in the garden shouldn’t just exercise the physical muscles but also engage the mind.

The first lesson is to teach the children how to use a post hole auger; something that is not intuitive. What I did with every child was that I first handed them the tool and asked them to dig a hole with it. They all looked at me strangely unable to even start using it. After I started each hole showing them how do dig, they then wanted to take over.

After a while, they would always hit a rock. Some would try to continue grinding away until I stopped them, others just stopped working. I then asked them how should we get the rock out. Most of the children quickly dropped to the ground like a Marine private commanded to a series of pushups and thrust an arm in the hole trying to grab the obstruction. A few reveled in their tango with the dirt and rocks so that they could finish their project. In other cases, the rock was just too recalcitrant to be dislodged. Sometimes shovels were used to break it free of the soil’s grasp, other times a heavy steel bar was thrust in the hole. Regardless the children all took different approaches in solving the problem and all were successful in designing their own methods.

As they dug, I forced them to measure the depth of the hole so that they would reach a proper depth for the trellis post. All of these little challenges tests not only their physical limits and abilities but also their problem-solving skills. It made the job go faster and more interesting for my students. Unlike when we weed when I must encourage them and use all types of games and tricks to keep them going, digging post holes was an activity that kept their minds and bodies thoroughly occupied.

Once we were finished digging the hole, there was another lesson to teach. I asked each child how the hole looked and if they noticed anything. About half said that the soil had different colors and others noticed little. I then had them measure and identify each layer so that we could understand the geology of our garden. They all eventually identified three layers of differing thicknesses. Needless to say there was slight amounts of mulch and loam with the vast majority of the hole represented by an olive hardpan.

We then talked about soil and how the different layers of soil would enhance or deter the growth of a plant. Again it was hard for some of the children to understand but for most it elicited a number of questions about geology.

“How did it get there?”

“How are rocks formed?

“Would it be like this if we dug to the center of the earth?”

This was just another example for me that there are no dull jobs in the garden, just dull ways to present them to the children.

The existential pleasures of building trellises

One of the tricks of the horticultural-therapy trade is to match the chores in the garden with an individual child’s ability and interest. With any kind of luck, the diversity of garden chores will be matched against the needs and interests of the children you mentor. As is typical, I am working with a wide diversity of boys and young men. But over the past two weeks they have been united in their interest and enthusiasm in building a series of trellises for raspberries and (I hope) blackberries.  

There is a plot of ground in the Children’s Garden at Green Chimneys that is sloped and not hospitable to many plants. We failed with blueberry bushes in attempting to colonize this space. On the other hand, gooseberry-bush cuttings I made last year took really well and should fruit this coming spring. Gooseberries are one of the favorite fruits of the children.

We decided that we should give raspberries a shot as they tend to grow in any soil regardless of how crummy it is. To maximize our space, Tracy came up with a rough design of the type of trellis she wanted built and left it up to me and my students to create a parts list as well as construct them.

The first part of the project was to determine what we needed. With one of the children, we went over the picture of the proposed trellis and decided to make it 6-foot high and 3-foot wide so we could have room to let the berries grow to their potential, but manage the spread. We also measured how far we would place the different posts used to support the wires that the berries would rest upon. We turned the measurements into a mathematics lesson; I have one child who can multiply well but cannot add. Other children have the opposite problem. Depending upon the child, the nature of the math problem changes.

The following week Tracy bought us the lumber and concrete mix we needed; it was time to dig holes. The ground in our garden is not very rocky but rather filled with compacted loam and clay. A traditional post hole digger  would be difficult for the kids to use so I brought my father’s post hole auger so that they could grind out the dirt. When we went to start the job, every child wanted to use the auger; they had never seen anything like it. They were amazed how well it could dig a perfectly round hole. And every child asked the same questions.

“How far do we need to go down Mr. Keller.”

“To the line marked on the handle,” I replied pointing to a mark I made on the handle, 27 inches from the bottom.

“That’s too much. I’ll never be able to do it.”

I assured each child that we would work together on digging the hole and it would not take that long. When they got a bit tired, I took over but within a minute or two each child was chomping at the bit to go back to work. The novelty of the auger trumped fatigue, real or pretended. Each had a different technique. Some leaned into the auger hard and turned it slowly. Others opted to spin it quickly. And others spun around with the auger making me dizzy just watching them work. Regardless of technique or child  it took about 20-30 minutes to dig a hole.

We then added gravel to the bottom of the hole and dropped the post in. I then gave each child a level and showed them as they held it next to the post how to keep the bubble between two lines indicating that the post was level in one dimension. We then placed it on a different side and did the same exercise.

“Your job is to keep the bubble between the lines on both sides of the post. If you do that the post will be perfectly straight.”

Most of the children took this challenge very seriously and kept the post stable and straight while I was adding fast-drying concrete mix and water. Some almost obsessively. “Little more to the right, Mr. Keller. No left.” Depending upon the child, we swapped jobs, with them adding water and mix to the hole while I held the post.  As we finished filling the hole with concrete mix it became relatively hard and the post rested perfectly in position.  We eventually added the cross bars to finish the main structure. We’ll add the wire in the spring.

It was eye opening to see how the nature of hard work and its novelty can change the motivation of a child. Chores such as weeding often require lots of nudging and coercion. But digging a hole and working with concrete required nothing; the kids just jumped in feet and arms first. During our time together, not one child asked what was the time or when was the session ending; they wanted to stay even longer and finish the entire job even though it was exhausting. This is just another example to me of how children will work hard and well when properly motivated and stimulated.

It’s not the job, it’s how you treat and set up the day for the child.

New and old seedlings

The garden in September is bittersweet as you harvest many of your summer fruits and start a new crop of students. While some of my kids seem to be perennials, over half are new and like plants in the garden must be transplanted into their optimal environment.

The first introduction to a new student is always a challenge as I never know what the best “soil and light” will be to get him or her to bloom. Some children do well with delicate tasks such as sowing carrots while others do better moving large piles of soil in wheelbarrows. Regardless, initial impressions are everlasting and I want to excite and empower the children during our first meeting so that they will want to come back to work with me in the garden.

The first new student I had this year was very indifferent to the garden: it seemed to have little therapeutic impact regardless of the different activities we tried. Fine motor activities didn’t interest him, nor did physically exhausting chores. He appeared perpetually sad regardless of the task. He would work at his assigned task but after a minute or so stop and stare into the distance. As we work the soil, I always try to keep a patter of conversation going with my charges in the hope that I will find something that will stimulate the student’s interest. But few things have worked with this student during the early weeks of the school year.

My next new charge was excited to be in the garden but totally unfocused. We decided to weed one of the garden rows and he was happy and pleased that I gave him a stirrup hoe to rip out the weeds. He told me that no one ever lets him use tools and this one looked cool. After I showed him how to use it, we started to weed the row. After about 5 minutes of work I noticed a large grasshopper in the weeds and captured it to show my student. With that distraction, however, weeding became superfluous to the examination of the insect and we placed the grasshopper into a magnifier to better see its parts.  And with this find, other children in the garden swarmed around also wanting to take a look. That was all the weeding we did that day.

My next new student was the polar opposite of the first: he was effervescent, talkative and highly motivated. He wanted to please everybody and anybody. In fact, his energy level was so high that he couldn’t get anything done; he just wanted to spend all his time talking about it.

“Aren’t I doing a great job, Mr. Keller?”

“Absolutely. Now let’s focus on putting the spinach seeds into the ground.”

“If I do a great job, I will get a big pepper, right?”

“We’ll see. But we have to do the job before we get anything.”

“That’s for sure. But I am working well, aren’t I.”

This is the kind of banter that went on for our entire session together. Any time another student or teacher came within earshot, he would start telling them about how good a job he was doing. He was a smart and high functioning student, but he just couldn’t keep his excitement contained. I discovered, however, that by leaving him alone and isolated from other people, including myself, that he was able to refocus all his energy on the task at hand.

For instance, another day we were seeding turnip greens and I needed to speak with one of the other instructors. I gave him a rock with a diameter of one inch and told him to plant the seeds one inch (or one rock) apart in the furrows we had created. He agreed and I left. I was gone for over 5 minutes but was keeping an eye on him from afar and saw that he painstakingly concentrated on his task without talking or interruption. When I came back, he showed me his progress.

“You did a great job here by yourself. I think that deserves an extra carrot when we finish up.” He beamed at me and together we finished up planting the greens with a little less talking than was typical.