Last Day of the Jr. Community Garden

School will be out next week, and so we had the end of the year celebration as a swimming and pizza party at my house.  All of us five women who steadily appeared two or three times a week for the entire year to make this Jr. Garden Club happen are breathing huge sighs of relief.

This was hard! In the first weeks we were exhausted by the kids' energy and disrespect. They screamed and leapt around and seemed unable to take any kind of direction. Yet, they kept on coming and gradually became good gardeners who knew the plants and how to grow them. They loved harvesting their crops and they loved cooking and eating the collards and carrots and beans and so much else!

As the year wore on, and we had a steady cohort of young gardeners, things got better. We grew to know these kids and we had amazing conversations with them as we weeded and cooked. We provided many wonderful activities planned - all with some connection to growing food. 

We wanted these kids to have a sleep-away camp experience, and our local garden club was eager to finance this at a lovely environmental education camp pretty nearby.  It was the hardest thing of all to sign these kids up to go to a great camp (for free!)

For helicopter parents this would have been easy. But for our parents here it was another world they could not understand. Of course, none of them had any camp experience and it would be a very big reach to send a kid off to someplace unknown for a week. And, then, they did not understand applying online, and many of them had no access to that anyway. The kids , of course, are wild to go on this adventure-camp! So, we held their hands, brought our laptops, made calls over and over, made the camp physicals available. And still, there were all those tag ends to complete. 

But! We have six kids signed up to go to Camp Wekiva this summer. Done deal. We know that we'll have to have some meetings about what to bring, where to go, how to get there etc. We'll have to provide some sleeping bags and swimsuits and whatever. Maybe we'll have to offer to drive some kids to camp. But, the end thing is that these kids will have such a wonderful experience and learn so much! (Of course, I fear that some of these parents will forget about camp.)

So, today, I knew that it would take some time to get the kids loaded up for the short drive to my house. It was herding cats. A few of them had forgotten their swim suits or their permission forms and had to call parents. One child was clearly disappointed because his mother was in the hospital and so nothing was working for him that day.

When, finally, we got all the kids unloaded for their afternoon of swimming and making/eating pizza, it was pretty much mayhem. They loved the swimming and they loved all the bathrooms with lockable doors and they loved running around inside the house. Some kids helped on the pizzas and salad and everyone loved eating all that stuff and the melons. They always checked to see if they could have more if they wanted.

After they ate (in five minutes) they went outside to play volleyball. Some of the kids kept peeling off and we had to make sure they were not by the pool or some other dangerous place. They had no idea of keeping track of their belongings, so there were many damp piles of swimming gear here and there. They had no idea about helping clean up anything.

And yet, I believe we have made a lot of progress with these kids! 

Some of the kids went upstairs and discovered the room where our grandson stays when he is often here. It is filled with intricate Lego buildings and models he has made, and there is a large collection of Lego bricks and pieces, books and toys. I just glimpsed that raw envy and it saddened me.

These kids have taught me so much.