So this week was a little less than ideal. On Monday, one of our teens apparently threw such a hissy fit that the site supervisor allowed him to switch to the dance focus group half way through the camp. This made no sense to us since he has built up quite a knowledge base of garden information and would have to learn in a few days the dance that the other group has been working on for weeks. So now we are down to working with one teen. To make things even more spectacular (feel the sarcasm) our one remaining teen informed us that she can't be there on the day of the open house. So we get to deal with that. That day we also got the bright idea to take a field trip the next day. We would take our teen to see the two other major community gardens in the area as well as the state museum. She called home to get permission and everything was set. After we made all the plans and got all the permissions, we realized that Tony Opalka was coming to speak the next day. So the next day we picked up Fatmata at her house and went on our merry way. Our first stop was Radix, a community garden with plants, bees, chickens, pigeons, ducks, rabbits and fish. We didn't get to see all of those things ( I wanted to see the bees) but it was still a cool thing to see. After that we had some time to kill before our tour of the other community garden that we planned to tour so we went to the NY state museum. It was quite cool but parking was the worst. . They had all kinds of exhibits that created like a timeline of New York History. They had stuff on everything from Native American Tribes and wildlife all the way up through 9/11/01 with culture, industry and some entertainment throughout the years. They even had a Sesame Street reel going in one exhibit. Our teen saw a fake fire in the replica Native American house and thought it was real. I bet the museum people would have been so proud of their fake fire making skills if they had heard that. We were going to ride the old fashioned Carousel but we had to leave before the next ride. So we went to the other garden and did our tour there. The girl who gave us the tour was another Summer Service Scholar who I only ever see in class. In class she always looks like she has given up on the world so I was pleasantly surprised when she gave us a very thorough and knowledgeable tour of the gardens that was far more extensive than the one we got when we went the first time. After that tour we took Fatmata home early and it was a good day.
So Wednesday came around and we planned to make pressed flower book marks but outdoor weather conditions were being uncooperative so we decided that we would take Fatmata to Siena the next day to work indoors on that project. Instead we decided to paint our garden stand. We painted it red and white and wrote on the front of it to advertise our produce. I tried to wash the brushes in our tiny foot pump sink but just ended up getting red paint all over the place. The brushes still got thrown away so that was a little frustrating. Also later I would scrub the paint off the walls because I made the mess and I felt like I should. Since we painted the stand that day we didn't sell vegetables.
On Thursday we made a pit stop at the ACE Office before we went to our site. They were making pizzas and said something about basil. We were like "you know who has SO MUCH BASIL? Us. So when we went to our site to get Fatmata and the flowers that we had left under a pile of bricks overnight, we picked some basil and brought it back to the ACE people. We also introduced them to Fatmata. After that we gave Fatmata a short driving tour of Siena and then went to the library and worked on making bookmarks for the rest of the day. We made quite a few then had to race back to our site for the end of the day debrief. Another interesting day.
On the last day of the week, we were back at the site doing normal stuff. Since it was a Friday we set up the vegetable stand. At this point we were selling bouquets as well as produce. A young neighborhood kid, probably around 15 or 16, came by on his bike and we told him about our products. To our surprise he bought a bouquet of flowers. We asked him who they were for and he said they were for his mother. Fatmata continued to practice her plant knowledge and garden tour giving skills. It was one of our best weeks by far.
And sooooo yeah... Bye.
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