Revived

"I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow."-unknown

I visited the garden this morning for my last post.  Still, nothing out of the ordinary, no huge growth or surprising appearance, but then again, thats not what I was expecting.  I have come to terms with the way mother nature paces herself in terms of growth and gardening and throughout this entire experience, I truly have gained an appreciation for patience.  I sat back looking at the plot, called my parents to update them on the progress and just breathed in the cooler Bethlehem air.  Last night I wrote about how many new friendships I have formed around this project and today I will write a little more about the new relationship I have formed with myself throughout this process.  As stated several times, I am not the most patient person.  I have adapted to this new fast paced life that consumes Lehigh and all of the students attending and I have become somewhat anxious with little down time for myself.  Aside from all the wonderful friendships I have made and the garden lessons I have learned, I think that I have found one place that works for me to escape my student life and have an outer body experience.  Hiding in my room for peace and quiet, going for a run to get away and other forms of disappearing seem to work, but not exactly how the garden has for me.  I have had so much self reflection here and I think part of why this plot has become so important to me is because I feel like the plants count on me, or count on us.  Obviously Mother Nature monitors the course they take with growth, but it is nice to feel like someone is dependent on me for some TLC sometimes, not just homework help, to go out and have a good time, or a teammate seeking advice.  The garden does not talk back.  The garden listens.  Not necessarily to anything I saw aloud, but it is almost as if my thoughts are spelled out in the air with a mutual understanding for quiet time... sometimes the only peaceful time in my day.  I feel like an old soul, wandering to the garden sometimes to get away and just sitting, listening to my ipod, or sitting in silence, but then after, I always feel so much better... so revived.  This project has slowed down my anxiety of always preparing for the next part of my day and has made me realize that just because there is no large result, that does not mean that under the surface, something isn't brewing.  The garden has provided me with a place of simplicity, a place for self reflection and understanding and a community meeting place for socialization.  I am so pleased that I will be able to continue the upkeep into the summer months and long after into next year and I hope that when those graduating return, they come say hello to their old friends.  I would not have wanted to end my senior year any other way then helping with this plot and I hope that future classes have the opportunity to experience what I have.

Kale

Today was the final day in prepping our garden. Today was the day we put the seeds Sara had procured for us into the ground. After today, we no longer have a plot of dirt but rather we have something with endless possibilities.

                We had the largest gathering of gardeners come to do this last part.  We divided up the bed, following Sara’s instructions to draw lines into the soil to drop the seeds into.  I was handed kale to plant.

                I was first acquainted with kale when I attempted the Paleo Diet back in the fall.  I had never heard of the plant before; to me the name kale brings to mind seaweed and other aquatic plants more likely to be found on the ocean floor than on a plate. The leafy plant even resembles seaweed, or at least it does to me.  However, I give anything a go. 

                I found with the right seasoning and the right mindset, kale is not all that bad. I have never understood why people go to great lengths to make their food taste like something else, for instance, companies go out of their way to substitute meat with other, healthier foods, but still keep that meat taste.  A veggie burger is never going to taste like a juicy cheeseburger. If I am going to eat a veggie burger, I think it is easier to enter into the venture thinking this is a veggie burger, not a cheeseburger.  

                I hope the kale grows, both because it would add to the list of ingredients I have available for the summer, but also because I do not want it to be my fault if it does not!

(Here is a pretty easy and delicious recipe I found for kale):

KALE-WRAPPED DATES WITH ALMONDS

Ingredients

 1 bunch kale, stems removed and discarded

 1 pound dates

 1 cup whole roasted unsalted almonds

 Directions

1. Tear each kale leaf into two halves.

2. Split the dates in half, removing the pit. Place an almond in each date half in the space left by the pit. Wrap each date half in a kale leaf half; pierce each with a toothpick to keep wrapped.

New Friendships at the Garden

After weeks of visiting the garden, learning how to plant seeds in rows, how to take care and turn over the soil and what to expect when the plants actually start to appear, I have not only learned how to become a gardener, but I can honestly say I have made a lot of valuable friendships.  I tried not to have any regrets throughout my senior year but now I am left with one small one.  I regret not meeting any of my classmates earlier in my college career.  I guess this is not necessarily a regret, but I am so lucky to have been surrounded by such a wonderful group of people, bonding over the creation of our garden.  Throughout my career at Lehigh, I can honestly say that I have never really enjoyed the company of every single person in my class until now.  Usually, all relationships ended as soon as we departed the building, and a simple "hello" in passing would suffice in the later years.  It was not until environmental imagination and until beginning this garden that I really have felt a connection with my classmates that extends passed our academics.  I truly consider my fellow gardeners to be my new friends and I think that something that is so important is that we have created this friendship around the basis of nature and the creation of our plots.  We all entered this project hesitant about what to expect and I know that I am now not only a beginning and better gardener, but I am also leaving this project with a new friend group.  I honestly wish I would have taken this class sooner.  I'm actually getting emotional thinking about this coming to an end.  I know that a few of us will be around to maintain the garden, but I know that I will miss the actual social aspect that was created around the naivety that most of us had when beginning this process. Yes, I did learn a great deal about gardening, but more importantly, I spent the remainder of my senior year with people I would have never become close with if it weren't for the garden.  I just wanted to say that I appreciate each and every one of you, and I am so happy to have shared this process with you guys.  I think that sometimes in life, especially in college, people conform to certain friend groups based on the social settings they put themselves into, and for me, this garden allowed for me to meet new people and create new friendships.  Gardening itself is hard enough, and sometimes its even harder to adapt to new surroundings and make new friends, but when I move after grad school, I think it would be a really good idea to join some type of gardening group in hopes of making friends like I have in this class.  I appreciate everyones patience with this process and look at my classmates and hope to find their various qualities in myself someday.  This has been the best closure to my undergrad experience at Lehigh. Thank you all!

Community Connection

My neighbors just got a puppy, so naturally I wanted to take the new dog for a walk.. and why not head to the garden?  I walked the new lab to the garden and was thrilled when I heard the giggling of children by the church.  As soon as I approached, the kids saw the puppy and bolted towards me.  I sat with them outside of the fence as the 4 kids asked what the puppy’s name was, if they could pet him, etc.  After a few minutes of playing with the dog, the kids began to get interested in why I was at the plot.  I explained to them that for a class project my classmates and I were growing a garden.  I then asked the kids what their names and ages were and was happy to find out that they all attend Broughal Middle School, located right on our campus.  I walk past Broughal almost every morning on my way to class and am overwhelmed by the constant chatter of eager middle schoolers.  Being a part of the masters program for Education, I am familiar with the socioeconomic dynamics of most of the students that attend Broughal and was not only happy, but also surprised that these 3 boys and 1 girl were so interested in our garden.  This reminded me of the post that Sara blogged about earlier.  Whenever people ask why our plot is in the heart of south side Bethlehem and not over the mountain at Goodman, I am reminded of the importance of being a part of the community.  As a student at Lehigh, I think that our student body is very separated and divided from the town we live in… Princeton review constantly ranks Lehigh as one of the worst college to town ratios which I think is extremely devastating.  I am not too familiar with Bethlehem, or the history, but from what I can see, a group of individuals from higher socio economic backgrounds somewhat came and took over with their admission to the school.  We pretty much in general disregard the people who live in the town year round, and pay little if any attention to the locals.  Trust me, I know Bethlehem is not NYC, or Greenwich, Connecticut, or any of the other prestigious cities that many of the students come from to attend here, but I do think that there is potential in south side Bethlehem and it just takes a little more effort from everyone living here to start the improvement.  I’m not saying that our garden is the remedy for this town, but what I am saying is that I saw how these 4 children’s faces lit up when I was talking to them about college, academics and our garden and I think that any outreach to the community we live in is a start towards improvement.  By the end of my hour or so with the puppy at the garden, the kids were asking when they could help out next since I did not have any of our tools.  I do not think it was so much about gardening that intrigued them, I honestly think it was the beginning of a relationship that they began to build with a college student that lives in their town.   Without the garden, I don’t believe I would have met these 4 kids… It really made my day seeing how excited they were about our plots of dirt and I really hope to see them again soon.

Gardening 101

Since this is my last blog post, I figured I would do the classic sentimental look-back on the garden. (Sorry for the following corny lines.) What first started out as a simple class proposal and me signing up because I have had gardening experience before and it was something different than the normal paper. Turned into something that I talk about all the time with my teammates and friends and something that I am excited about doing while I am here at Lehigh this summer. In my previous paper I wrote about my experiences of working in a local, fresh fruit market in California. But now I feel like I have the experience of what it takes to begin a garden. The uncertainty, the dirt underneath the fingernails, the patience of reading the planting instructions on the back of the seed packet. I’m looking forward to that first tomato, and the marigolds that Kim and I planted rising up out of the ground and blooming (hopefully.) I also want the sun to come up and the cloud cover to be removed so our plants can soak up some nice sunshine. But alas, I can’t control the weather or if the plants will survive. Which is a very hard thing for a control freak like me. So I am glad that my garden days are not coming to a close and I am looking forward to spending my days escaping Lehigh two blocks away and visiting the garden to collect our veggies and say hi to the growing plants.

Farming: A carreer path I will never take

I don't think I could ever be a farmer. Have my whole life salary based on the uncertainty of whether or not you will have a crop. You spend your days planting something as small and fragile as a seed, place it into the ground and hope that it will make it through the uncertainty of weather patterns so it will grow and you can put food on your own table. I know I would be a nervous wreck just waiting for the seeds to sprout out of the ground. At least if you raised an orchard of trees, you can tell if the tree is alive or dead. Of course, then you get pesky birds that can eat the fruit off of your trees. Thinking about this comes around to the point that do farmers spray their crops with pesticides, not because they want to fulfill societies demand of always having perfect vegetables or fruit. But rather, to have that back up of; if I spray this then I will definitely have a sustainable crop and can feed my family at the end of the day. I don’t think it is survival of the fittest it’s just that if you have the measures to obtain security you are going to take them. Again, uncertainty. Just plant the crops and hope to some higher being that they will grow cannot be a thing for everyone.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty. The feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when you plant something so minuet and plain into the ground and hope that something will sprout from it resulting in a plant. Or it could be the idea that you just want some sign from the little seed that it is going to sprout, like a magic bean. You plant it in the ground, and it automatically springs up and grows roots telling you that you planted it correctly and that it will produce a green bean. But no, yesterday we planted our little seedlings, provided by Sara, and while I placed Marigold seeds horizontal in the tomato, basil and pepper bed and made sure that the seeds where only a ¼ inch deep in the ground and six inches apart. All I could think of is, well, I hope I did this right because if not I probably just killed some innocent seeds. With the rain this morning there is some certainty left in me that our little seedlings got a nice drink of water and may spring up in the next week. But, I silently begged and asked the seedlings as I covered the soil over them that they could give me some sort of sign that they were going to make it. Just another lesson learned in starting your own garden 101.