The Garden this week

With me being classroom bound on Friday, I only managed to get out into the Spring sunshine on Thursday afternoon.  The weather was gorgeous with all of us shedding our coats as the session wore on. We are madly planting seeds, the polytunnel is rapidly filling up with trays and the children were delighted to see the first seeds sprouting from the pots that were planted earlier!  We had a brief celebration before returning back to our digging.

Jacob and Khalid, as part of their class work, have been interviewing various members of staff around the school and on Thursday, it was my turn as the gardening staff member. Mrs Whitley conveniently disappeared to the far reaches of the garden and refused to return until it was safe. I'm lucky to get a photo of her at the best of times, so the lads had no chance of interviewing or videoing her.  It's not my favourite pastime either and cringe at my picture and loathe my voice. So with Jacob asking the questions, we stood by the future runner bean bed while Gavin and Robbie prepared it and took a deep breath.  Jacob had prepared his gardening questions well and we chatted so much that Khalid's video ran out of time!  Then we went on a tour of the garden, when the boys revealed that they were submitting it to the BBC's "School Report". Oh crikey ........

So I missed helping the children with the chores - Sana, Suwera and David worked outside planting tomato seeds, Jacob returning from his reporting duties, watered the trays and tidied up, Gavin and Robbie made a great team and sorted out the beans. It was just a very busy warm day.

Mrs Whitley, bless her, carried on without me on Friday, but was joined by Mrs Colefax who helped enormously last year, mainly with the hard work of digging. She is a real trouper and a valuable member of our team. Recently other commitments have kept her away from the garden, but she's itching to come back.  I know she thoroughly enjoyed herself and I thank her for coming to help with our gardening groups.

Coffee Morning

Our coffee morning session on Tuesday allowed us to introduce ourselves to the parents.  Most of the parents do know what we do, but not in great detail and that we are always looking for helpers.  On Tuesday we had a lovely group of Arabic mums to chat to and we have offered them a vegetable bed so they can grow Middle Eastern foods (if our climate will let them) so the children can experience world wide vegetables too. We, ourselves, are growing traditional English foods like purple carrots to show the children that carrots aren't always orange, dead straight and sealed in plastic bags and also there's possibility of some Kenyan vegetables if we can source them. It was a really lovely session and a great chance to work with other groups in our community.

Miss Mole from Funtime has offered to be our scout and will help us buy stuff and get it back to school. It is quite difficult to go out and purchase items as I work at school all day and Mrs Whitley hasn't got access to a car. That would be a great service from Miss Mole - we give her a shopping list and she can source it for us.  That's very generous of her and an enormous benefit to us.

Cameron's mum has offered to help from September, but hopes to call in periodically whenever she can.  Mrs Whitley and I are hoping that this is the start of things to come and we can build up a healthy parent helper base for the garden.

Watering

If anybody can spare 10/15 minutes when they dropped their children off/pick them up, to bob up to the garden and water the poly tunnel plants, please let yourself be known to Mrs Whitley or Mrs Hawkins!  We can't do it all the time and just need a little band of volunteers.  If we get enough, hopefully it would be just a once a week task for one person. If you can organise a little group, all the better.  Thank you.

Thank You

to Asda, Holt Park for giving us a box of pansies and violas for free. It all helps make our garden and our school are brighter place to work in and every little gesture like that, is very much appreciated.

The Pond

Interserve are hoping to start work on making modifications on our school pond after Easter, so the children can go into the wildlife area, with us knowing that there won't be a large splash and little Johnny doing backstroke in the pond weed!  Mrs Turner has offered us some frog spawn, so "yes please, Mrs Turner" once Interserve have finished their work!

Sunflower Competition
The Sunflower Competition has really taken off and we 've had an excellent response.  There are still envelopes of seeds for sale, so still bring in your 20p's next week if you want to join in.  Best to find Mrs Whitley and ask, though I do believe she has been visiting the classrooms as well.