New Beginnings

Popping Corn from our Fall harvest

One month into the new school year and what a fantastic beginning of my second year here at Larchmont Charter Elementary as the Garden Teacher. It's finally feeling like Fall. The corn is ready for harvest, Figs and Pomegranates have been the stars of our Garden Stand and dishes, and the Meyer lemons are slowly blushing into their yellow, sweet ripeness. The skies are a little darker and grayer in the morning, the air a little more crisp. I need to put on a sweater when I step out of the door now, with warm coffee in hand and usually at least two bags to lug to the car. As the new season begins, I get to be in the presence of 300 K-5th grade students, some new, some old, but all to inspire, to teach how to grow food, community, and hopefully, into more mindful, critical thinkers, not just in the garden or kitchen classroom, but in life.

What an honorable, privileged and powerful role I have the opportunity of holding. Never had I really thought in my life I would be playing such an impactful role in the lives of so many, and not just of my students. I have discovered my lessons extending into their families, a ripple effect traveling unimaginable distances. I have received emails from parents requesting recipes of the latest dishes which their daughter loves and wants to teach mom how to make, a Pomegranate, Kale and Fig salad, with Meyer lemon, olive oil and honey dressing comes to mind. My student even had the confidence to suggest she make the dressing next time because mom did not add enough honey. This is the stuff I live for; that is the empowerment of Edible Education.

2nd Graders transplanting baby lettuce w/volunteer extraordinaire Cassey.

While life poses its many day-to-day challenges, I find it helpful to just embrace the moment with compassion and patience. All the chaos of a transplanting day with twelve first and second graders, all the little voices calling out my name and seeking my attention, all the excitement surrounding the garden, the rolly pollies, the worms, all the peaceful mornings before school starts, all the manic Mondays, the down copy machine, the joyous discoveries, all of it makes up the tapestry of our lives. While I aim to live through this yogic mindset, I have to admit I don't always reach it. I am human after all. Some days, approaching everything with compassion and patience seems impossible, and when you have to jaywalk across Vine St. to move your car by 12pm for street sweeping every Tuesday because you do not have a parking spot at school and make it back to teach your class all within a 10-minute window, it seems impossible to find compassion in that.

But being human, we also have the capacity to be creative, to problem solve, to persevere. While I lost compassion towards having to run and move my car before my next class, I did not lose my patience. When we are challenged with a situation, we can either complain about it, or be creative about it. When, after taking the first easy step of emailing my dean to see if there were any spots left on campus and having the answer be no, what was a girl to do? Well, nothing for a few weeks except jaywalk and move her car bitterly, but then this girl began doing yoga again, her most beloved practice, next to teaching and gardening, and suddenly there was shift.

Our Fall Veggie Bed in progress; gardening is an evolution, as is Yoga.

Gardening and yoga are two different practices, but I would argue, one and the same. Explaining this would be another blog posting, so for now, let me just make my connection to sparking creativing. Since moving to Silverlake, I hadn't been close enough to my home studio, the Yoga Cove, in Monrovia. I was very hesitant about stepping into a new space, feeling like I was some how betraying my home studio. But then, it occurred to me for the past 5 months how achy my body was feeling and how my energy was not at it's most efficient form. I also thought in my mind that my teachers would encourage me to keep practicing and open my heart to a new space, not letting go of or forgetting my home studio, just being open-minded and open-hearted. I needed that grounding practice again and found a studio in walking distance from my home. So I did it. I stepped into Urth yoga last week and my body and spirit feel re-awakened.

My body began feeling more open and receptive; I began sleeping better and more readily able to handle my work more energetically and creatively. After beginning yoga, the idea of how to solve the parking situation, fell into my lap. I thought one day, hey, I have a roommate who works at the same school. We could carpool together on Mondays and Tuesdays when the street parking is bad. And Jessie, being the great roomie she is, said yes. This has been our second week, and it has been fabulous. We get to spend mornings together getting ready and spend the afternoon drive home re-telling our days to each other. When she has meetings after school I just catch up on computer work and prep work. We get to catch up with each other and help each other out two days a week with driving; it's awesome. It's amazing how even the smallest shift in our day or week can make such a difference.

Sprouting seeds in handmade newspaper pots!

Perseverance. Perseverance can take one far in life. I believed this as a studious bookworm throughout my elementary, middle school and high school days, through those all-nighters in college, and I believe it more than ever now. Perseverance has found many forms this year at school. Seed starting has been a challenge, finding the right method and the right amount of time and care. I realized I couldn't do it all. I didn't have the space at home to take care of 15 egg cartons of seeds, and my fellow teachers, with jammed-packed days, couldn't either. Starting seeds kept failing, but I just saw those failing moments as opportunities to try new methods. And I have. But actually, the real credit goes to Ms. Marjorie and her 2nd graders. Instead of spraying their newspaper pots of seeds, they poured water into the plastic tray that contained the pots. In this way, the seeds stayed evenly and consistently moist and the sprouts were not being sprayed down when they sprouted, which meant less damping off, the disease common to sprouting plants.

Sprouting seeds in egg cartons is a creative way to re-use them. 

As with yoga, gardening can spark new ways we look at everyday things. Before throwing anything away or recycling, I think of whether or not it can be used in the garden. Paper egg cartons for example can be used to start seeds, in a similar way that newspaper can be re-used to make paper pots. The opportunity of giving something a second life feels gratifying, at least to me.




*photos by Tiffanie Ma