Helping things
grow is part of my profession.I am a teacher.
The actual translation of the word kindergarten in German is
a garden of children. I like nurturing and facilitating the
growth of living things. So it is not a stretch to
understand my passion for plants.
The garden club
began at Piney Point Elementary in 2000. We started out
small that year with the facade of the Resource room and
have learned so much over the years. There have been many
challenges, for example, one of the first meetings I handed
six of the children a small pepper plant to plant. I told
the children that the roots go below the ground and the
leaves go above the ground, then I told them to plant their
pepper. After I checked on the rest of the children who
were planting seeds, I came back to the plant group. Out
of the six plants, I could only see two. They had buried
the entire pepper plant in the soil, leaves, stem and all.
I was much more careful about defining vocabulary after
that.
The Milkweed
plant (Asclepias tuberosa), the larval food for the Monarch
butterflies, has been our main success. Many patches of
milkweed around the school have come and gone. The Monarch
caterpillars and butterflies have survived curious children,
the hazards of mass foot traffic, and uninformed
groundskeepers. We are very grateful for this survival.
The “magic” of the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly at
Piney Point has made even the sternest teacher smile in
child-like amazement.
So the next
time you are at our school keep your eyes wide-open and be
alert to the wonders about.
-
Mrs. Thomas
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