The Wheelbarrow

The children love the wheelbarrows! Our collection is now up to four, and even with that many, it's hard sometimes to find an empty one. Right now two of them are holding sifted compost, and one has a big pile of weeds. Luckily there is one free to carry supplies up and down the road between the Tower and Home Gardens.

Here the Kindergarten 1 children push one of our shallower wheelbarrows back up the hill to the Tower Garden.

Ceanothus

One of our most visible plants at St. Anne's is our lovely ceanothus. In late winter/early spring our ceanothus blooms, summoning dozens of bumble and honey bees to its flowers with their unusual smell. Wikipedia describes the smells of some varieties as "intensely fragrant almost to the point of being nauseasting, and are said to resemble the odor of 'boiling honey in an enclosed area'".

I think some students might agree that our ceanothus smell resembles this description. One student called the smell "soap", another "old socks", and I myself find it a bit like "stinky locker room". However, it seems to be intoxicating for the bees in the best way, as the noise of their humming is startling, and we can stand and count up to 15 bees at any given time in the height of its bloom.



Ceanothus is a California native, and interestingly, one of the few plants whose seeds can lie dormant for 100's of years. In the wild, forest fires are required to germinate the seeds, but in captivity, seeds can be forced to germinate through long periods of wet and cold.  A easier propogation method is to cut and root the plant stems.

See the two bees in this photo?

The Bee Game

In 2006, one of our founding garden parents, Deidre, made a fantastic game called The Bee Game. Her idea was to introduce the children to pollination through play. Every spring since, the kindergarten gardeners have played The Bee Game, and for years after children into the grades beg to play it all over again.

First of all, the children must reach into a little sack and pull out a card with a small swatch of fabric. This card indicates their role: flower or bee.

This photo shows a blue flower and orange flower. The children pin the felt onto their front, and carry their golden ball of pollen around with them.

The bees are striped like honey or bumble bees.

To set the scene, I explain that it is a very windy day, and the flowers are blowing madly in the wind. The bee must buzz around and land on a flower (tag them), and when this happens, the flower stops running and the bee and flower trade golden balls of pollen.



It is a good thing to be tagged, I explain, for otherwise your flower will not grow seeds. The children learn through this game that the flowers must receive a different pollen ball from their own in order to grow the seeds. Once tagged, or pollinated, the children stay still and "grow their seeds".

When the bees catch all the flowers the game ends, and then we trade costumes and play it all over again!

Gorgeous New Comb

Here are two photos showing honey bee comb before it's used by the bees for either storage or birthing. Notice the traditional tear drop of the comb. This comes from a top bar hive. Bees attach one comb to each top bar in the hive.

Here's a close up of the hexagonal cells.

Third Grade Shelters 

In 2013 the Third Grade will take breaks from their work in the garden to dive into other projects related to their practical activities. Right now they are in their shelter block. In years past, teachers have asked their third graders to build a small, sample shelter they could then bring to class and display. My son built a sod house using the arc of a deflated basketball as its shell, then layering the basketball with moist soil and grass seeds. It was green and fluffy when finished, and did look like a (small) grassland sod home.

Ms. Guzder, however, decided to have her class build life-size shelters in partnership with the Presidio. The children spent three mornings sawing, building, strapping, and digging and made three amazing shelters. The children had plenty of time to enjoy them, and many brought their families back to dine in the dwellings over the course of the week.





We were very grateful to the Presidio for letting the class collect fallen branches and choose from large piles of green debris the Park crew dropped off. The children learned what it takes to build a viable shelter, and, developed great skill and confidence through the endeavor.

First Grade:  Y is for Yarrow

Dear First Grade,

Along the border of our garden, underneath the prickly red rose bushes, grows our good friend yarrow. Over hundreds of years, yarrow has been called some funny names: old man’s mustard, bad man’s plaything, snake’s grass, and seven years’ love. Here is the Queendom we call it the yes plant. Let me tell you why.

When yarrow first came to our garden, its seed arrived on the mane of a white horse. The horse had been eating the yarrow plant in a pasture far away, and when its master brought the horse inside the gates of our Queendom, the horse tossed its mane this way and that in greeting, and the yarrow seed flew off and landed next to the road by the roses.

The seed lied in wait many days, until a rain shower came and moistened the ground. The seed, no bigger than an ant’s head and as thin as paper, grew plump with moisture and then basked in the sun. Before a week was over, its first little shoot sprouted, and yarrow began its life in our garden. Yarrow grows very soft, feathery leaves which lie down flat on the ground. The leaves stretch out from a central point and lie in a circle one on top of the other.

One day a snail came slithering by and felt the soft, light texture of the leaves under her slimy muscle, and asked yarrow if she could bed down there for the day. “Yarrow, may I curl up under your leaves and sleep the sunny day away in your cool shade?”

“Yes”, answered yarrow, and lifted a leaf so snail could snuggle in.

A few days later two spider sisters came each with an egg sac on her back. “Yarrow” the spider sisters said, “May we hide our egg sacs under your feathery leaves while we go off hunting for insects? We will return before our babies hatch, don’t worry about that.”

“Yes”, answered yarrow again, and slid the egg sacs into hiding.

A worm tickled yarrow’s many roots that afternoon. The worm called up “Yarrow, may I make a home among your twisted white roots?”

“Yes,” yarrow replied.

Yarrow continued to grow more and more of her feathery leaves. The tips stretched out in each direction creating a lovely green, plump circle of foliage on the ground. Yarrow’s roots began to reach and stretch in all directions, and when they found a place they liked, they sent up a new patch of feathery leaves, and a brother or sister of yarrow was born.

Soon, there were lovely piles of grey green yarrow leaves among all the roses by the road. Each yarrow plant was as cheery as the next. No matter what a garden creature asked of them, their answer was always “yes”. Soon the little piles of fresh green leaves were surrounded with friends of all sorts: other flowers, bugs, birds, squirrels, all chattering away, making conversation, and from time to time asking yarrow for other favors which any of the yarrow plants would happily grant.

“Yes, yes, yes” you could hear them say.

Finally, as spring turned to summer, each collection of yarrow leaves began to feel a little hard bump in the center of their pile. As the weeks of June turned toward July, that bump grew taller and taller, until soon all the yarrows had one long stem reaching for the sky. The other flowers and garden creatures just stood back and watched this miraculous growth. They had never seen yarrow grow skyward before, and until now only knew her leaves. Whatever could this tall green thing be?

Just as the July 4^th holiday passed, yarrow’s single stem suddenly broke into two or three little shoots and these shoots, too, reached up toward the sky. On the top of each little shoot were tiny light green balls. “Whatever could those be?” wondered the garden friends of yarrow. The yarrows just kept growing, their little balls at the tips of their stems getting bigger and lighiter.

One morning, just as the sun was reaching its highest place in the sky, right above the heads of the yarrow plants and all the garden creatures, the first of yarrows’ little stem balls burst open into the sun. Just like popcorn, one after another of the balls opened up and revealed a cluster of tiny yellow flowers, blinking up to the sun.

“Yes!” cried the sun, looking down on yarrow’s gorgeous outstretched arms of bright sparkle.

“Yes!” cried the birds, as they enjoyed yarrow’s new splendor.

“Yes!” cried the insects, as they took flight to see what all the commotion was about.

“Yes!” cried the yarrows, as each plant lifted her stem arms into the air, between the tips a riot of yellow blooms, a gift to the sky.

The spiders and worms on the ground agreed it was a perfectly shaped stem and flower for yarrow. For each tall stem was standing tall, arms outstretched, offering up a gift to the world.

And dear children, do you realize the shape of sweet yarrow’s gift? Join me: first we are small and flat like yarrow, then we kneel and grow straight and tall, then our stem grows outward at its tips, bearing its gifts to the sky. Yes, what letter are we?

“Y”. Y for “yes”, and Y for “yarrow”. 

Melting Bees Wax

The Third Grade took apart our empty bee hive and melted down the empty comb to make beeswax products.

 The children chose the cleanest part of the comb for melting. 




After the wax melted, the children strained it in cheesecloth.

There was lots of dark matter left behind. The official name for this is "slumgum". It includes the pupal lining of the comb and excrement from the larvae. This means we were melting brood comb, as opposed to honey comb which is cleaner. Apparently slumgum warmed by the sun is used to attract swarms of bees when a hive needs to be filled. Bees are very attracted to it. Slumgum can also be a great fertilizer.

These photos show our clean wax hardening, and below, our final lip balm gifts.