This weekend I planted some annual flowers with my wife and I washed our deck. It’s that time of year again when we extend our lives into outside spaces.
These spaces make our homes feel larger. They let us extend more of our lives outdoors. Our back yard becomes another room to spend time in… or rather, out.
We have the whole summer to appreciate the effort we put in to getting our garden and deck ready this weekend.
Our gazebo has 3 garden boxes and each year I fill them with plants that are hearty and don’t need too much attention. I usually include some herbs/edibles, and this year they are basil and mint. The rest of our backyard garden are all perennials and so this small row of flowers is the only plants I put care into each year.
I often share that I’m not someone who particularly enjoys gardening. Just ask my neighbours who care for their lawns like I care for my kids. Meanwhile I don’t like like yard work and tending to my ugly lawn. But if I’m completely honest, I enjoy tending to these three little garden boxes.
I enjoy cutting basil to add to a salad or pasta sauce. I like the vibrant colours on our deck. And I like nurturing this small row of plants that don’t take too much time to care for. But if I’m completely honest, I also like that it’s pretty low maintenance. No weeding to worry about and just a quick check every couple days that the the soil isn’t too dry.
Still, these three little flower boxes bring me joy, and remind me that summer is finally here.
I’ve probably written about this several times before, but I’m really not a fan of yard work. I don’t understand growing grass and making it nice and healthy, just so that it needs to be cut more often. I think weeds are prettier than a blanket of green grass. I understand watering a vegetable or herb garden, but flowers are made to be outside… if they don’t grow with the weather you have in your environment, then they are the wrong flowers to grow.
I love being outside, and I enjoy my back yard immensely. I want to spend time out in the sunshine. In fact, I’m about to assemble our above ground pool and I’m looking forward to putting a couple hours into this. So, it’s not that I don’t like doing chores outside, I just don’t like gardening, and cutting the grass, and weeding. Maybe one day, 30 years from now, if my knees and back are capable, I might fall in love with nurturing a garden. But right now, I’d rather sit in my back yard and enjoy the dandelions… if only my wife (and neighbours) agreed with me. 🙂
7 years ago we had a community day at Inquiry Hub Secondary when 3 students organized the construction of our school garden. It was a wonderful day filled with food, family, and community support. But mostly it was about students showing pride in their school. Everything was organized by the students and the event was a complete success.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how empty the school feels these days. Students are working from home, and our garden is empty when this is the time it is usually thriving. It made me think about how some students thrive while others don’t.
Joe Truss asked in a Tweet:
The achievement gap is really the gap between ______ and _______.
And I responded:
…between
those that easily thrive
and
those that need to survive.
This has made me think about the inequality of what students deal with, in a metaphorical sense of a garden.
Some students are given every opportunity to grow… they are raised in a home like a garden filled with fertilizer, and they are given all the nutrients to not only sustain themselves, but to thrive.
Some students have a patch of dirt rather than a garden, and the elements support them sometimes, and sometimes the conditions are harsh.
Some students have parents and teachers who are good gardeners that know how to foster health and growth.
Some students have parents and teachers who are frustrated by their lack of growth and unaware as to how to foster healthy development.
Some students grow like weeds, regardless of the conditions and environment.
Many other students depend on those conditions, and can strive or just survive depending on how they are nurtured.
Schools aren’t perfect, but we can do a lot at schools to help give every student an opportunity to grow. We can be the wards of the community garden sustaining every child, and doing what we can to help them thrive.
Students are learning from home, but are schools still nurturing our students in the same way? Are we just giving them sustenance, or are we fostering opportunities to blossom?
