West-ward Ho!

Howdy,  

Well here we are, my internship is almost over! To tell you the truth, the past few weeks have been super stressful as far as intern work goes but it is no ones fault. Just purely the great dance of life always keeping me on my toes! :) This past month has truly reinforced the fact that life moves really fast sometimes and if you blink you might miss something important. I missed about 3 weeks of internship work this month, due to getting sick and traveling which really set me back. I have been trying to play catch up this week and thankfully I have gotten a lot done! However, I'm wanted to talk about the trip I took that caused me to miss a few days of work because it really impacted me and has added a great deal to my internship!

Hallie goes West!

I recently went to visit my sister in California, it was my first time in a plane or that far west ever! 

Northern California blew my mind, it is absolutely beautiful. I mean for Pete sakes there were Hydrangea growing in the MIDDLE OF SUMMER, that is completely unheard of in Texas...like ever. The weather there is perfect to grow almost anything it seems. It was interesting to see how much the weather can affect the growth of something and how abundantly things strive in an environment like California!

My sister had a full blown garden with tomatoes growing in wine barrels that she started from seed. She also had lettuce growing on her porch and a peach and walnut tree in her back yard. I have never in my life picked a piece of fruit from a tree, washed it off and eaten it! It was awesome! I took lots of pictures of both to use in my lesson on Fruits and Nuts in Chapter 6 of the JMG Manual! 
There were Agapanthus (African Lily as most people know it) in every corner you turned, in the medians of all the roads; it was amazing! My sister have patches and patches growing around her house! I had way more Horticulture nerd moments then I really want to admit! In fact I probably took more pictures of the amazing gardens areas in California than anything else! 

They have hanging pots full of flowers hanging from the light poles in San Francisco. By the bay there was a crab which had succulents growing out of its body! Do you see why I was so excited?! What I thought was truly interesting was the condition of all of the plants, because they were all in wonderful condition. I grew curious about what kind of maintenance has to be done, if any, to those gardens. I think it would be interesting to work for a city and be able to design new gardens and areas like this! It was truly interesting to experience a different type of Horticulture and different type of landscape design which will help me a lot in my up coming chapter on Landscape Horticulture!

Super Cool California Things: 

Sequoia sempervirens

Another really amazing thing that you don't see in Texas are Redwood Trees. In Northern California the species Sequoia sempervirens grows! Some have been there for almost 2,000 years. They are breath taking and obviously huge. The bark alone is almost a foot thick! I learned that people used to log these by hand saw!!! WHAT?! How crazy is that! I even got to look at one of the saws they used, it was the biggest one I have ever seen! 

I am planning on using the pictures and information I will research about Redwoods in a program I am creating about the installation of trees into gardens and home landscape for Chapter 5 of the JMG Manual. I will also be incorporating the Survivor Tree from the memorial site of 9/11! 



Air Plants: 

Possibly the coolest souvenir I could get were Air Plants. Air Plants are a type of Bromeliad plant that do not need soil to grow. All you have to do is soak them in water for 30 minutes once or twice a week. 

My sister had given me one for Christmas and I forgot to water it. The only plant I killed all semester would be the one I can't go to the local nursery to get! Well needless to say...I kind of ended up buying 4 (totally worth it),  they are so cool and there were tones of  different species that I cannot recall the names of! One of them was even blooming purple flowers. It is truly amazing what plants are capable of doing!

Plants would be great for children in low income housing that don't have a plot of ground to grow anything. In California they just place them in a small mouth vase or a piece of drift wood. 

Although this trip was not directly connected with my internship, I think it was very important that I had an experience like this during this time. Being that JMG is a national program, it is important to understand the different environments that the students are in and how I can relate these lesson plans to all states! I am thankful to be able to travel and create new connections with my internship!  Now that I am back into the swing of things I have created 3 more programs this week. I even got to find my inner child and do some tracing and coloring for a tessellation activity on the use of repetition! I also used a picture of some grape vines I took in the Russian River Valley in California to represent repetition! 

Ready for some more awesome stuff (as if this internship wasn't already awesome)! Today I met with my supervisors and went over the programs I created and I got some exciting news! My instructor let me now that he is very interested in keeping me on for some contractual work because of how comfortable I have become with the Word Press site. I believe I briefly mentioned something about this in a previous post but this seems to be the real deal now! I would be working a few hours a week with miscellaneous projects for the JMG office as they continue to transfer their old website to the new one! The potential of this offer really happening is very good and I am beyond ecstatic! I am crossing my fingers that I can continue my work with JMG past my internship and see where all these programs I have created go! 

Anywho, Thank you for reading. I only have a few more posts before my internship is done! Peas stick around for them!

Have a grape day! Also, someone please take be back to Cali!?

Thanks & Dig'Em, 

Hallie

Teahing the Teachers

Howdy, 

Last week was week 5 of my internship and I got to spend part of it traveling. On Tuesday, Lisa and I traveled to Brenham ISD to do a training with some of the teachers across the school district.

This was a really great learning and teaching experience. Not only did I get to learn more about JMG but I also got to communicate with the teachers and share my opinions with them. The group we had at this training was very small with only about 5 teachers, but they all wanted to be there. It was truly amazing to see teachers so hungry for the knowledge about JMG and how they could intertwine it into their school curriculum.  Not only did we share ideas with them, but we showed them how easily these activates could be done so they could see how non-threatening the activities really were.  I could just tell that the teachers were thinking "I can do this, I don't know anything about gardening but I can do this!"  That is what training is all about, right? Giving people the tools to accomplish something they may not have been able to do before. 

I learned during this training that a lot of times the teachers simply do not think they are knowledgeable enough to teach children about gardening. The activities in the Teacher/Leader guide of the JMG Handbook not only allows the teacher to teach the student but teach themselves as well. The concern of funding for the actual handbooks and the teacher guide or having access to materials to do activities came up in conversation. This prompted us to have a discussion on how JMG can get the whole community involved in projects. Teachers are always searching for parental support, but a program like this could allow companies around town to donate supplies or even allow the school district to develop a relationship with their county extension office.

During the training Lisa spoke to them about all the different aspects of JMG. Not only does JMG cover gardening but there is a curriculum for Wildlife, Nutrition, and even a second level for kids in grades 6-8. My favorite part was seeing the teachers get involved in the activities that we brought as examples.

Here are some of the activities we did:

Know and Show Sombero 

For this activity, the teachers had to create a hat out of newspaper and decorate it with all the things a plant needs to grow without discussing it with anyone else. They then had to share what was on their hat with the rest of the group. They all got really creative and made some really great hats to share. 

Another activity we did was called a "Grow Card"

This is an activity that allows teachers to use all those left over construction paper scarps that kids love to throw away. They do this be blending the paper with water till it is soupy, then pour it out over mesh to squeeze the water out. All you have to do after that is sprinkle any kind of flat seed on top and set it out to dry. You can then cut it into any shape you want and give it to someone, all they have to do is bury it in the soil and water it. How cool is that? Recycling, showing someone you care, and growing a plant all at the same time. If that doesn't preach how much of a plant nerd I am, then I don't know what does! 


During the training we even traveled outside, in the blazing Texas heat, to an outdoor learning center. Here the teachers learned to make their own bug aspirators and measure a tree using only a pencil, a person, and a measuring tape.I spoke a little in one of my first posts about how the lack of teacher participation and how it has caused a decline in horticulture education in my very own community. This training was a real booster of hope and I am so excited to see how JMG in Brenham schools takes off. The teachers even offered to let me come back and use them for trail runs of any future activities we create! Talk about great participation!

In other news: 

I am so excited to announce that I FINALLY finished editing the video of Mr. Cain singing a really awesome gardening song.  Check it out here: http://jmgkids.us/goingfullcircle/ 

AND, Mr. Cain has officially started blogging for the JMG website which you can find here: http://jmgkids.us/blog/

Hopefully you get inspired by one of his posts, and please share it with all of your friends with children or teachers to know!  


Before I go: 
I'd like to again thank all the people who have taken the time to read this blog and laugh out all of my terrible plant puns! I get a lot of really great compliments on everything I've said which makes me very happy. Also, a big shout out to the teachers of Brenham ISD for baring the heat and being such wonderful examples of teachers who truly want to teach their children! 


I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July! Don't forget to wear sunscreen, because I will not be held parsley responsible for your sunburn! 


Thanks & Dig'Em, 

Hallie