A few months ago, I invited Ralph Thoresby High School to bring a few of their pupils to our school garden as part of their Enrichment Day. The whole school takes part in various projects to learn about different aspects of life outside of school and a party of Year 9 students plus their teachers came up to work with us.
As usual, Mrs Whitley did a sterling job and had organised a delivery of flowers from Redhall, Leeds City Council's nursery in North Leeds and together with Miss Morgan, they spent the morning with the students, planting up tubs of flowers in red, white and blue for our front entrance, ready for our Jubilee celebrations next week and beyond. Then there was a massive planting session of all our seedlings in the polytunnel out into the beds (at long last!), lots of weeding and tidying, planting our playground tubs up with petunias and many other jobs. We had been so far behind with the weather that we were starting to fret how we were going to catch up, but Ralph Thoresby saved the day. We can't thank them enough and were very impressed with their hard work and commitment. It was a scorching hot day, but the children just kept working. We are now fairly up to date and don't feel so hassled. So thank you again Ralph Thoresby from all of us at Cookridge and a thank you from me to Mrs Whitley and Miss Morgan for spending the whole day with them and overseeing everything. You have all been stars.
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| Taking a well earned rest |
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| Part of the Ralph Thoresby Team |
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| Some of the petunias |
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| More petunias from Redhall! |
I did get out myself after a morning in the classroom and meet the staff and students. Pathetically I managed to pot up one tray of sunflowers. My excuse then is that I went and asked Sophie, Willow, Thailan and Ali if they would like to help me sell some flowers on the playground market, which they absolutely leapt at with undisguised enthusiasm. They carried several trays of nasturtiums, marigolds, alyssums and mesembryanthemums (also known as Livingstone's daisies or Ice Plants - which I call them as I can never remember their full proper name!) down to the playground. So at 3pm, we were busy selling them at 50p a pot and quite a few went, but I will set up the stall again in the morning and will do so until the end of the week! No doubt, I will have a huge band of willing helpers wanting to help me out on our stall. The kids absolutely love selling - I just sit back and let them deal with the sales and the money. The more adventurous ones will start up a market stall patter, yelling across the playground "Come and get your plants here - only 50p!" I just love every single minute of it.
p.s. I have a confession to make. After suddenly realising that I should take some photos and retrieving the camera, I discovered to my horror, that the wretched thing had drained its batteries and had no energy to take photos. A fumbled exchange of batteries ensued whereby my intended subjects had then wandered off back to the garden. Stuffing the camera into Mrs Whitley's unsuspecting hands as she passed, I hoped she could do better. Unfortunately, the batteries I had replaced where equally useless, but Mrs W managed to save the day. However, I note with dismay that the photos I took (or I thought I'd took) have disappeared completely. Not really addressing the problem of a few week's back when I let a child loose with said camera, I have to put my hands up and own up that technology and I do not have a good connection and hence we have only four photos of a really superb day. I hang my head in shame.
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