REMINDER: Our monthly Garden Work Day is this Saturday, April 22nd!

I know Joan has her own email list of collaborators, affiliates, supporters and loyal minions =) but I wanted to repeat this info for anyone that happens to be regularly tuning in to the IDES Learning Garden blog: We are having a volunteer day this Saturday, April 22nd, from 10:00-1:00. We have been doing a potluck style feast at the end of the various projects and chores, so please bring some kind of food dish to share... I think Dorothea, Josie, Yanusz and I will be contributing at the very least an appropriately mustardy egg salad!

Here are some of the things Joan will be orchestrating us into accomplishing:
-- Establish grade-level SALAD garden beds (with signage)
-- Plant potatoes in vertical beds
-- Fabricate and initiate Greenworks composting bins
-- Plant potatoes (Donated by Barefoot Farm)
-- Paint Signs for 'Experience Dickson' Night, others
-- Spread fresh mulch about our grounds (conserves water) --> Please bring a wheelbarrow/pitchform if you have one!
-- Start more seeds + transplant more stuff from the greenhouse (kale, cabbage, etc.)
-- Plant in our pollinator gardens
-- transplant healthy-sized seedlings into pots for sale
-- whack some weeds down --> If you have a weedwhacker, we NEED YOU + IT to attend, desperately :)

Thank you so much to Joan, Raymond, the Garden Leadership team, the Teacher Garden Vision Team, and Brad Johnson for all the planning, support and execution that we've been able to manage so far. Many of us fail to realize how active these people are making each and every Dickson green space, day in and day out. Every time I see Joan during the school day, I can't believe how many kids she and her wonderful supporting cast of highly-engaged teachers have got being pulled on by the gravity of sustainable, green living and thinking =)

As always, I look forward to seeing familiar faces out there this weekend (and to dining from those now-classic, fabulously unique + uber-functional stainless steel mess trays)!

Thank you for your work, we're getting there!

Hey there, I must apologize that its been ten fourteen days, and I am only now sharing some pictures (and a fitting summary) with you. March's garden workday at Dickson was a busy little hunk of success, thanks to all who came out... and if you like chickens, you might have even taken a moment to meet a fave pet of mine, 'Knucklebird' aka 'Lazy Eye' :)

Making clay seedbombs (who is guerrilla gardening?)

Timbersong helps us paint more of Joan's cherished chalk-able signs!

Who doesn't love painting?

Beds getting new soil (the foundation of food, after all)

Now that's a manager that I'd work for... on the production floor, gruntin' n grimin' with the team!

Un-signing signs

The kids we had out knew how to PLAY and HELP OUT... awesome!

Relocating some growing baskets

Its a dirty and certainly not flamboyant -- but undoubtedly essential -- job!

I'm excited to think about these inches becoming feet of green matter!

Helping with food prep in the Community Kitchen

Moving dirt -- an underappreciated and not-very-visible job

Happy campers make the work less of a chore, that's for sure!

Sitting down for some refreshments

They're always in motion... and we (of the Garden Leadership Team), together with your help, are striving to be, too!

I know I'm going to risk not naming a few of our generous workday attendees, but here goes: Mrs. Christal, Rucki, Timbersong Academy, Steve, Rick, Guy, Amy, Ruby, Mairead, Dorothea, Mike, Brad, Cynthia and Stephanie. That's not mentioning kids, which were many and which contributed to very meaningful work too. Things like moving hay, making bird nests, putting words up on signs... thanks, ya'll!

For me, after each of our monthly gatherings... I can see and feel that we got a lot done, and additionally I'm blessed to have had a good time -- among good people -- doing so. But I often lament, to myself (until now) that progress couldn't happen more quickly. We're getting there, I promise you! One day, we'll have a big, beautiful outdoor gardening and activity space at the welcoming end of our school, and wonder how it ever was once just sod and dreams :)

And on the note of dreams: Joan recently showed me a wonderful illustration of the current plan for the overall look. I snapped a pic for you:

Click on the image to view a bigger version / zoom in!

Special thanks to Steven Wyda, for all of the landscape architecture work that goes into planning out and realizing such a vision. Dickson parents, staff and community know how to work hard AND, how make things look GOOOOOOD... right? =)