Y Gardens: Curiosity Club

The youth from de Marillac Middle School at St Boniface Church on Golden Gate Ave come to work in the garden weekly as an elective in their after school program. Each group of 8 - 10 boys and girls signs up for a quarter at a time. They can and often do repeat.
This quarter finished on Tuesday 3/8. We innovated in several ways during this session:

• all gardeners were offered inexpensive journals
• we made maps
• we built a pond
• we considered accessibility
• we planted into sheet mulched berms on the asphalt 

Other activities included propagation from seed and slips, small team and full group projects.
I was surprised by how ardently everyone took to journalling, to map-making; how seriously the challenges of access were considered. Especially unexpected: that when after all the team work this Q during the last session I had organized 1 task per participant -

1. move straw from "Growing Cuisine" to pond entrance in "redwood understory" area
2. assemble a donated hose caddy 
3. transplant container flowers to berms
4. plant out marigolds
5. fill water cans
6. work compost into soil
7. fill planters with fresh soil
8. cultivate fallow planters

- they were eager for the hardest tasks and they chose to team up and to move between teams as they finished. The most complicated assembly project kept them going beyond the class time. Just as they had solved the puzzle it was time to go so they asked to take it with them to finish and bring it back later.
Their enthusiasm is contagious, also working with KinderGardeners in the morning stimulates my  work with the older youth in the afternoon.

Accessibility in the Demonstration Garden

Context: Working outside with 8, 12-13 yr olds in the SYL Central Y Gardens
 Map
 03.01.2011

Influenced by H Gardner, Five Minds for the Future [2006] discussion of development of the ethical mind.

Intro: After pointing out the windchimes in each corner of the garden and explaining their purpose as orientation devices. Who has someone in their family or among their friends who is blind?

Responses: 3 knew someone well who was blind.

Exercise: Ok everyone get a partner and we'll meet in the center of the yard. Each pair gets a blindfold. One of you will wear the blindfold the other will be the guide. Remember that the person who isn't sighted is the leader and will take the arm of the guide. The guide's job is to steer clear of danger but help their partner explore the garden. Try to visit all the stations in the garden. You will take turns.

Results: The guide nearly always took the lead, during feedback both parties complained that the partner didn't listen. Some of this is developmental age-appropriate. Also the barometer was dropping because of coming storm.

Conclusion: So you can see that navigating and enjoying our garden without sight will be challenging. Until we see each other again be thinking about what we might do to make our garden safer and more fun for blind people.

Autism Social Connection meets thunderpuppets

Beginning in April  the thunderpuppets players will work with ASC to explore social learning and collaborative narrative building. 10 year olds.

BART feature survey for vision impaired

Here is the start of a new and fascinating thread: with Lighthouse for the Blind I'll work to assess BART stations features for their accessible mapping of transportation systems.

QR encoded gardening

The last few weeks of gardening have shown me new sources of inspiration including initiation of gardening classes for 3 & 4 yr olds "KinderGardening" and the book club asynchronous reading different donated books and discussing online. Tonight I ran across the missing link to bring the garden collection online and allow read-aloud of labels literally hardlinking through QR code "Quick Response" 2d reader and generator.
Now for a taxonomy and a method for notifying the blind user that a label or bulletin board exists so they can allow their phone to access it.
I can tie a GIS to physical place this way.

Videozoography, Garden Basic Training, ThunderPuppets

Max takes a bath.

During winter of 2009-2010 when we moved the entire rooftop garden from 220 Golden Gate to asphalt yard at 387 Golden Gate the garden's guardian, Max, the Anna's Hummingbird, sat on the highest point, the largest pine tree, to watch. When I walked the site to make sure it was clear, Max's pine tree was moved so he sat on a high pole making a sound I've never heard a bird make that I could only describe as sobbing. How could I tell him his tree was only a few hundred feet away? [ I'd purposely located it as close as possible NE corner of the new site].

Not long after I was working with the old plants in the new garden and he flew right up to the air in front of my face, hung there for a moment and then went to forage among the coyote bush and day lillies. Another afternoon I took refuge from the rain under the partially finished greenhouse and was recording video, primarily for the sound, when Max showed up. Its a poor record of a beautiful moment.

I also posted first garden training video on watering:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuE_6yozpw0
that I hope will solve an ongoing social problem.

And a short documentary about the formation of the ThunderPuppets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqy0hP7KIFw
which at least gives other participants a chance to talk about their experience.

Fieldnote: Y-Gardens Anniversary

01.11.11

Today was culmination of a year+ work on the new garden site. After receipt of a DCYF grant for sustainable garden development[see attached] there were some funds to amplify recent in-kind donations [straw, plants, soil].  So for the past week we've worked intensively on a few specific projects.

• A pond in the SE corner at the end of the Biome Wall
• reorganization of other spaces so there is vegetable gardening for culinary program, cultivation, reflection and demonstration areas
• handwashing station with reclamation

Next steps include finding effective paths for representing the work online for asynchronous participation and enhanced social learning.


A place to expose questions like -

" Describe these garden systems.

• water
• human & other animals
• soil
• climate

Illustrate the ways they interact with each other with diagrams.
Point to examples of each system in our garden."