Monday morning at Sanderlin garden truly felt like fall in Florida, more than comfortable in the shade and not completely melting in the sun.  Olivia and I began the day by surveying the fantastic job the Friday volunteers had done getting the garden into shape.  Also the grassed was mowed by the Monday’s earlier volunteers, and the garden just looked great!  Furthermore we realized that some harvesting could be done by the classes that day.

We began doing some weeding and watering, when it was time for our first class.  Mrs. Dillions kinder garden class is always full of energy, and they did not disappoint.  The seemed to retain some of the information from last week as far as predators, prey, pollinators, and I think it was Zach who remembered decomposers.  We began our water cycle instruction and the class was knowledgeable of precipitation, evaporation, even a little of condensation.  The Olivia taught them about transpiration, and where they seemed to understand some, it was this point where we really started to lose our crowd.  We asked if they could do their best to remember transpiration, and we moved swiftly into our celery experiment.   

It was then time to go into the garden and do some exploring.  We asked them if they saw any changes, and of course they notice the two melons getting rather large.  Also someone mentioned, “It looked like there were more plants”.  Then it was time for our class to do their first water.  The whole class held the hose, while Olivia instructed them where to spray. When the first one was finished, they would move to the end of the line.  The camera man did get hit with water some, but our fancy equipment was just fine.

I then brought them over to the cucumbers, and showed them the two that were ready for harvest.  They choose the one to pick, and pulled it. The class all got back into single file and proceeded out of the garden waving goodbye.  One child was chosen to carry their celery experiment back, and they were going to share holding the cucumber on the way back.  Each child pretended to munch down on the cucc, and they decided they were going to try it when the made it back into the class room.

Just a side note:  Mrs. Dillion returned her survey and we got a real kick out of reading it.  We may have a future Michael Jackson in our misted.

Everyone have a great week off.  Olivia, have fun in Tallahassee.

Blessings to all,

Wes