First day working with the kiddos? Yes please!

(also this, wherein Mikey Many Blessings and I pose in front of perhaps my favorite mural o' the day - a hard choice when there were so many good ones to choose between!)

That photo was taken at Environmental Charter High School, where we spent the second half of the day mulching and talking tree care with kids. I tried to keep my head above wakeful waters, but I must admit that I was more than a bit drowsy post first school groups (and lunch). Still -- it was a super day.

What? Okay, I'm getting off track. Let's tackle this chronologically.

Our first destination was Environmental Charter Middle School - an awesome place to spend our first tree groups, as I got to see the trees I planted there last year, now much bigger and that much closer to fruiting! The lovely miss Beca Grimm and I paired off to teach two groups of seventh graders about mulching, compost, soil amendments, and pruning. It was nice to have a partner in such endeavors -- it can help to bounce words and energy off someone else, especially if your group isn't particular engaged. And, heh, well, it's middle school. Not being engaged is often par for the course.

Still -- our kids were great. They may have mumbled many of their answers to our questions ("What are reasons why we even WANT to be kind to the earth? What's the point?" "...to survive"), but at least they had answers, right? Right.

And here they are, in all their pre-teen glory:


Then, as I said, on to ECHS, where we embarked on - can you guess? Moooore amendment and mulching adventures! Yeeeeaaaahhh!

ECHS is kind of ... a dream school, at least to those of us environmentally-minded folk long out of the awkward teen years. There are fruiting trees and vegetable gardens all over the campus; there's a greenhouse, and a huge focus of curriculum is, as you could guess, on earth stewardship. The campus is lovely, and it's a small school, so the student-to-teacher ratio is on the lower end. Coming from my you're-just-another-bad-test-score public school experience, it's hard not to get starry eyed about a school such as ECHS - but it's also easy to forget that teenage is teenage no matter where you are. It may seem palatial to me - but it's still high school.

But... but.... good gravy, come on - they have things like this:

Is it just me, or is this kind of AMAZING?! Oh, and I totally had a fruit off of one of the trees, too. Delish.

We finished up the day and braved the not-quite-rush-hour LA traffic to get back to the Sugar Shack, where I'm writing this now. Dinner is soon to be served, and then perhaps libations, as we have a tour birthday today! How exciting!

Time to depart the computer-box for the evening. I leave you with some more photos - and with my excitement about going to some elementary schools in the upcoming days. I love working with children of all ages, but I get especially excited about the younger ones. Considering I'm pretty much a giant nine year old ... it makes sense.

'Til tomorra!

Nasiiiiii