The kids will plant the seedlings after their seeds germinate, so today they all decorated their own pots for taking a seedling home. We hauled out all sorts of craft materials, and the kids went wild. Paint, ribbon, spongy stickers, googly eyes, sparkly stars…they were so excited to have a pot of their own.

Kristin, the resident art teacher at Light & Leadership, helped with the project, and the two of us enjoyed watching the kids get creative. They all wrote their name and vegetable on their pots to fully claim their ownership. I couldn’t stop smiling at their excitement and …Read More

I’ve spent the last three weeks scoping out garden locations, building a brick wall with my dad, building a raised bed, buying soil and compost and mulch, buying seeds and trowels, planning garden activities, putting up a chicken wire fence, and much more.

But today was the big day, the day that everything else was leading up to: the first day of gardening “class.” We began by experimenting with germination. I gave each kid a pile of seeds for a different kind of vegetable, then asked them to divide their pile of seeds into four equal parts. Each kid experimented with …Read More

This morning I went on a walking tour of the neighborhood in Zona D with Lara, Kristin, and Yrma, Luz’s mom. Yrma led us to a nearby “foothill” (it looked more like a mountain to this Midwest girl) that had been divided into different plots of land for people to garden. Since the plots are on the side of the foothill, an extremely steep stone staircase was the only way to access the plots, which were also created with walls of stone. Each flat level was about five feet deep, so the whole side of the foothill looked like a …Read More