Poet Verandah Porche and Collage Artist, Jeanette Staley

poetry kids in the garden

poetry writing in the garden

worked with the summer campers to awaken their senses in the garden. Each child created a garden collage and a poem to express their personal experiences as they walked through the garden. Below are students and teachers hard at work. This will be a two part entry. Their final work is so wonderful, its own blog space will follow in the next entry.

Here are Jeanette and Verandah simultaneously teaching children to express their ideas in two integrated lessons.

Garden art and poetry example

Abby’s garden collage

Sharing Cucumbers Teens and Preschoolers

Olders met Youngers in their garden yesterday when the incoming Kindergarten class took a tour and were offered freshly harvested cucumbers. As you can see in the background, the teen crew took very good care of our garden during their five week stay. Some of them would like to continue working even though their internships are over this week.

We will miss each and every one of them, including their crew leader, Katie Davidson. We hope to welcome them in the garden whenever they can make it to Westminster in the future!

Natalia looking out from the sunflower house.

Katie, Natalia and David help make lunch for garden crews at the Parks Place kitchen. This meal was made with locally raised products.

Crew leaves with Kale bunches and pickles.

ED SHORE’S KOSHER DILL PICKLES

Yesterday our teen garden crew learned how to make pickles—from harvesting to canning. Follow along on this photo journey. Click on the recipe for Ed Shore’s pickles  at the top of this entry. Ed was a beloved physics teacher at the Putney School for thirty years. He was so much more, opening the world to his students by leading bike trips around the globe, raising an amazing family in Westminster West with his wife, Joan, and creating wonderful science experiments through cooking. He was the first person who suggested using grape leaves to me as a crisping agent in pickling. I haven’t yet found the chemical explanation for this reaction. Any investigative scientists out there looking for a research project?

Scrubbing Cukes

Dill Head

Grape Leaves for Pickles

Cucumber and sungold tomato harvest. Filling jars

Pouring Brine into jars

Stirring Brine

Garlic Grape leaves and Recipe

Dill head and Garlic in Jars