This Saturday, I got a very special tour of an abounding community
garden in the 35222 area.MPower Community
Garden is a partnership between gardener Don Ehrett, his wife Missy, the
neighborhood residents including Freshfully, Avondale Brewery, Red Mountain Community School, and MPower Ministries.
Red Mountain Community School student
"Visitors Welcome, Please do not pick."
Uniquely MPower and the Ehretts, expertise in Dahlias
The last of the Dahlias
Dahlia Tubers
More dahlia tubers, saving for next season
Bees
Bok Choi, Jade Pagoda
Compost, some leftover veggies provided by Freshfully
"Urban Canopy" Summers may be hot in Birmingham, but one neighborhood just got a little cooler. As part of an ongoing partnership with the College Hills Neighborhood Association, SEC recently planted 60 street trees along 9th Avenue. In addition to understory dogwoods and redbuds, we've also added four varieties of oak trees, two types of magnolia, and grancy greybeard, river birch, and locust trees. Next up: a makeover of College Hills EcoScape!
Update by Roald Hazelhoff, Picture by Arnold Rutkis, Sepia-toned by me :)
BSC student Madison Garrett and Reeves Gopfert planting a black gum tree in College Hills
Last Sunday, we met with an enthusiastic group of gardeners who have started a garden in Fountain Heights. The site is built on top of an old school building which made for some very creative uses of the remains including window green houses and tires for raised beds. Look forward to more to come from this group of agriculture enthusiasts!
For your final project for this semester you will choose one of the following:
SWBAT: Become problems generators and problem solvers. 1. Problem-based: Research one country in Africa, identify a problem, and develop an action plan for something our class or members of the community for which country you choose could do to solve the problem. SWBAT: Become quality innovators. 2. Project-based: Be the innovators of a quality project based on a topic that is related to issues from TFA. SWBAT: Become quality questioners. 3. Inquiry-based: Ask a question about the book and research this topic. Create a project, which demonstrates your learning.
4th 9 Weeks
Project Rubric
CATEGORY
100-90 Engaging
89-80 Emerging
79-70 Developing
69-60 Participating
59 and Below Failing
Collaboration
Groups work together and each student contributes equally
and efficiently. Each member of the group has clear role.
Groups work together and each student contributes
effectively. Each member of the group has a clear role.
Groups work together.
Groups work together. Roles are not equal and efficient.
Group did not work together.
Process
The process of the project is well thought out and executed.
Students use class time effectively and efficiently.
The process of the project is clearly planned and executed.
Students use class time effectively and efficiently.
The process evolves in a reasonable manner. Students use
class time effectively.
The process was not organized and the students did not use
class time effectively.
There was no process. Students wasted class time and
everything was done in the last minute.
Product
Product is authentic and clearly represents the work of the
group. It is also creative, neat, and multi-modal.
Product is authentic. It is creative and multi-modal.
Product is authentic and reflects knowledge of material and
work. It is neat and effective.
Product is generic and required little thought or work. It
still reflects knowledge of the material.
Product is not satisfactory and reflects ineffective
collaboration in the process.
Presentation
All group members participate. Presentation stands out as
well planned and engaging to the rest of the class.
All group members participate. Presentations effectively
summarizes the work and process.
The majority of group members participate and engage
effectively in explaining their work.
One or two group members participate. Work is explained.
No group members participate.
Reflection
Reflection represents the whole group. It thinks critically
on the process and shows a change in
thinking. It is honest and authentic.
Reflection represents the group work effectively. It is
honest and authentic.
Reflection demonstrates work done by majority of the group.
It is honest and authentic.
Mr. Wilson is up on the roof, this roof is on fire for the Glen Iris School and Community!
Go by today or tomorrow to see a great turnout of parents, teachers and students who are pulling together for their school garden. Even today at 4:00, there was a donation from the Track Shack of $5,000!!!
Even more important, check out all the tents with bricks to paint, food to eat, and beginning TOMORROW morning, plants and veggies to buy!!! All proceeds go to making this school garden a reality!
A special thank you to Maple Valley Nursery, located in Shelby County, for a very generous donation from the farmer himself. Market starts at 8 AM, and Mr. Wilson will be on till 6 P.M.
A picture of what will be available tomorrow plus a whole lot more of good fun.
Wondering what to do to celebrate??? There are plenty small things to do which make a world of difference. However you celebrate, enjoy this life and this earth! No matter who you are, it's the only one you have!
~The Birmingham Chapter of the TNCwill be hosting a picnic in Railroad Park on this Sunday from 11-3:00. This is a 100% free event with music, games, activities for the kiddos, and more fun than you can shake a stick at. You can bring your own basket of goodies or there will be picnic lunches available to purchase from local vendors. There will also be more than 60 picnic tables decorated by local artists, corporations, and nonprofits.
~Legacy, Partners in Environmental Education will be having a Go Green Night with the Barons on EARTH DAY. Join the Legacy Team and the Barons at Regions Park at 4:00 p.m. Order tickets here and see the Barons take on the Mississippi Braves.
~Slow Food USA is working in the Terra Madre communities of Africa in order to create a thousand food gardens. You may learn more and donate here.
~Take the 20/20/20 challenge and become 20 % cooler through your knowledge of your carbon emissions. Get a free sticker that declares this too!
~Vote for F^3: Financing for Food and Farming as well as sign the One Campaign's petition for a call to all G8 leaders to stop the cycle of hunger and poverty.
On this day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated, and Maya Angelou was born.
Bellringer: “After the grueling work of the commission I came away with a deep sense – indeed an exhilarating realization – that, although there is undoubtedly much evil about, we humans have a wonderful capacity for good. We can be very good. That is what fills me with hope for even the most intractable situations.”~Desmond Tutufrom, No Future Without Forgiveness
Incredible unveiling this weekend of the Sims Property, honoring the Garden Lady of Homewood, Catherine Sims. Above are some wonderful SEC logo inspired Sunflower Cupcakes from a group of Homewood Girl Scouts.
Please visit this gorgeous 5 lot property at 109 Highland Avenue in Homewood. Ask for Laura Rodgers, gardener extraordinaire and the caretaker of the property. Thank you to SEC's Roald Hazelhoff and Stoneshovel's Arne Rutkis as well as all the volunteers who made this happen!
Two things to absolutely make me uncomfortable: SCIENCE and LOVE!
So here I go being awkward again, and what made me think of this is an experience working with a class on an ACT passage that included "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud." by Carson McCullers. I have since become fascinated with this idea, the science of love. What would happen if we all loved each other without condition? And, just as the man ends the conversation with the young boy, "I love you," what would happen if we ended more interactions with these three words?
I. Love. You.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are many interpretations for love and much power associated with these words; however, why not think of it this way? For every person you meet, love them for being themselves, whether that self is developing, just like you, or the opposite of you. With so much power in these words, what I began to think about while reading was, what power could be gained through simply loving the people I come in contact with? Why's it so difficult to love others without condition?
The truth is somewhere in this, many people will let you down and we might let others down. That's what makes it tough. But, the hero in the story is the one who continues to love, just as Lauryn Hill spelled out in a favorite album of mine, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, to
L-O-V-E, regardless.
Another recent hit, by One Republic goes, "Oh, this could really be a good life."
I believe it may just be <3!
Some quotes from the story I LOOOOVE...
"It is hard to explain scientifically, Son," he said. "I guess the logical explanation is that she and I had fleed around from each other for so long that finally we just got tangled up together and lay down and quit. Peace. A queer and beautiful blankness. It was spring in Portland and the rain came every afternoon. All evening I just stayed there on my bed in the dark. And that is how the science come to me."
"Anything. I would walk around and I had no power of how and when to remember her. You think you can put up a kind of shield. But remembering don't come to a man face forward—it corners around sideways. I was at the mercy of everything I saw and heard. Suddenly instead of me combing the countryside to find her, she begun to chase me around in my very soul. She chasing me mind you! And in my soul."
Recent meal with another hero of mine, Latricia Davis, who is also a star on the Woodlawn basketball team as well as the Alabama Dream AAU team.
This tradition has become an irregular tradition after a year of coaching lacrosse and being in my 8th Grade ELA class, has since become trick or treating, visits to basketball games, and birthday dinners at New China Buffett. This time, before dinner I met Latricia at Wiggins Recreation Center in West End where she was keeping score for a small community team across town. With a large W on her shirt and the word INTEGRITY written below, I have never been more proud then to see her coaching along the younger students.
Through the course of our standard Chinese buffett and getting the updates on everybody, we discussed some of the worst moments along with the best, some not so good stories and some successes and I remembered some wise words from a classmate of Latricia's, "Circumstances separate the heroes from the chumps." I do not think I have ever learned as much as the year I worked with these students at Whatley. I still think about this statement along with more from Shelby Wilson, "it doesn't come in a day."
For Latricia, who gets surgery on her knee today, I'd like to offer up thanks for students who may have given me the hardest time or I may have gotten on their NERVESSSS a time or two, you all continue to impress me more and more as times goes by. I may have only been part of your life for 50 minutes a day, for one year, but the learning continues, and these are moments and lessons I will never forget.
Along with this, a new lesson, food is not something to mess around with and neither are chumps!
What do six survivors of paradise in the above picture have in common? A love for Mozambique Pasta on which we survived for one week in Mozambique.
While living in South Africa, I traveled for one week with a group to Imhabame, Mozambique and stayed in the above pictured, fancy thatched roof huts, barefoot the entire time, sleeping with fly nets all around me, and one thing that kept us all together Mozambique Pasta, courtesy of chef Katy Burke Randle :)
Mozambique Pasta
1 onion + 2-3 tomatoes, diced and sauteed over pasta
eggs (however you like and on the side)
Very quickly we found that these items were readily available, cheap and provided us with the perfect amount of sustenance for a week of farming palm trees and running on the beach at sunset ;)
It has been eight years and this is still a meal I never forget as well as continue to make.
Aside from my voluntary time of being shoeless and this very complicated recipe, here's another a real way to make a difference and stand up for children worldwide. On April 10th, Tom's shoes is challenging us all to go ONE DAY WITHOUT SHOES. Join the movement and take the barefoot challenge! Check the website, plan an event, and join today!
Currently, I'm attending a full day workshop on how to blog about the things I love: food, gardening, teaching,photography and many more. This is an event benefitting the Desert Island Supply Company.
It's amazing and there is also a teen workshop at 1:00.
Students, there are many ways for you to get involved (whether you can make it here or not):
1. Choose a book you would like to have on your own deserted island, look over DISCO's wish list and ask someone to partner with you in donating to their library ($100 donation)
2. Attend a student workshop, open and free to ages 6-18 (check DISCO's website for a full schedule)
3. Submit your own writing by finishing this sentence,
*Food is....
(submit to help@desertislandsupplyco.com)
*By submitting , you give DISCO the right to publish your work in poster/book form.
Pre-CW/ Q.O.D./ bell ringer:
"Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it." -Laura Miller
Shindigs Catering sponsored by Whole Foods
Sponsors of the event and some cool companies to check out include: Whole Foods Market, The Year of Alabama Food, SUDIA (The Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc, Swiss Diamond, Roland, Jim 'N Nicks Bar-B-Q, High Road: Craft Ice Cream & Sorbet, watermelon.org, Recipe Lion, Key Ingredient, Goo Goo Cluster, Winston-Salem, The Harvard Common Press, Finergrind, BirmINgham, myrecipes.com, International Biscuit Festival, and Zatarains.
Kat Kinsman, managing editor of CNN's Eatocracy was the keynote speaker!!!
More pictures of Tarrant's Ecoscape, by Birmingham Southern College's Southern Environmental Center and spearheaded by Tarrant alumni and central office employee, Kelley Hewitt Javinett.
