Eat Your (Candy-Coated) Heart Out

I'm babysitting again, the same wonderful family I was sitting for last year. It's only once a week, but we've been getting some quality crafting in. For example, this cake. Inspired by a five-minute viewing of the show Cake Boss, we went to the CVS, grabbed a box of yellow cake and some vanilla icing, then went to TOWN with the food coloring, sprinkles, jimmies, and what-have-yous. I think it's a classy cake. And oh so delicious :)

Navigating the Urban Jungle

For the past few months I've been sending out feelers to see what kind of opportunities there are available to me to try to make a little extra cash. In May, I stumbled across this brand new garden store in South Philly called Urban Jungle, and with M's help I pitched a workshop series to the owner and he was enthusiastic about it! So now I am the Horticulturalist and Educator at Urban Jungle, where we have workshops every Thursday on a variety of topics. Below is a picture of my little set-up in the store last week, before I started teaching my class on Gardening for Butterflies and Hummingbirds. You'll notice a batch of freshly baked cookies in the tupperware with the green lid.



It's not a full time job by any means, but it's an exciting opportunity. Attendance has been patchy, but I'm learning a lot about promotion (some of it from my in-house DJ who has lots of experience). So check us out on Facebook, and if you're in the area come on out to a class! (The next class is for families; it's called Salsa-in-a-Pot and you can register here.)

Pumpkin Carving Party!

Last weekend we threw an end-of-season party at the community garden. We carved pumpkins, ate home-made sweets (carrot spice muffins, gingerbread cookies, and several kinds of delicious chocolate chip cookies) and drank home-made hot spiced apple cider!! Mmmmmmmm.



The garden looked great and it was really fun to show it off to friends and family. My parents came to town for the event and I was so proud to show them what I've been doing all summer.





One of our gardening families came with a gaggle of friends and relatives and the kids ran around the garden examining everyone's pumpkins and adding the perfect amount of unbridled enthusiasm to the event.





We carved 34 pumpkins in all and most of the people stayed so we could line them up and light them. Remember that this garden is in a cemetery, so it was a nice touch to be able to stay until after dark and enjoy the spookiness of jack-o-lanterns among the graves. It really gets you into the Halloween spirit.



Here are our masterpieces. Mine is on the right and the other two were made by J and M (duh).



It was the perfect fall event.

Whew, I'm Busy!

Now that I've started my new full time job, I'm realizing just what those words mean. Full time is exhausting. But I'm trying to get into the routine and I'm sure I'll have it down in no time.

I've been doing a lot of work outside, building new gardens and expanding old ones. We have a wonderful crew of Americorps volunteers helping out with the community gardens. Here we are planting at a brand new garden, one of the smallest gardens we've built.




That's me!



How nice! We're using mushroom compost from Kennett Square, PA to build raised beds. Woodchips cover the pathways and a wire fence surrounds the whole thing. This is the way we build all of the gardens, though each community group takes the garden and makes it their own.

I also spent some time at another garden, this one at a day care center. We took the kids out to dig up the potatoes, which was probably the cutest thing ever. They were so excited! They rushed to show me what they found, and they dug furiously with their hands covered absurdly in plastic gloves that were too large for them.



I'm really enjoying the work so far and I'm learning a lot from going out into the community to talk to the gardeners. There are a lot of different cultures involved in the community gardening movement in Camden and I love talking to everyone and seeing how everyone gardens. There are a lot of different plants that people are growing and some of them are completely new to me. I'll keep you posted on the progress, and try to take more pictures to share my new experiences.

ACGA conference: City Blossoms

The other organization that really impressed me at the conference was City Blossoms, a garden-based education nonprofit in Baltimore MD. At the conference the Executive Director, Rebecca Lemos, co-led a workshop called "Grow for the Goal" where we the participants were encouraged to think about where our true interests and passions lie in our community gardening efforts. The goal of City Blossoms is to create community spaces that children and their families will bond with and absorb into their own daily lives. To this purpose, Rebecca and her staff make the children the designers and tenders of the gardens, hosting regular workshops and workdays in the garden. They often use visual art (especially sculpture) to give the children a sense of ownership of the space. At some of their gardens the kids create products to sell to the community, like dried herbs, lotions and other beauty products that are made from the garden.



I think I was so struck with this organization and this workshop specifically because Rebecca is approximately my age, and she has done so much that I want to do! Creating children's gardens, each one a unique representation of the specific community of people who created it, using art to tie people to the land, and using gardens to teach children and their parents to care for at least that one little piece of the Earth. I picked her brain a bit after the workshop and took three pages of notes.



Check out their adorable blog, where all the pictures on this post came from!

Next up: Dale Chihuly and the Franklin Conservatory

Empty Nest Syndrome

Last week the robins finally flew the coop. I've been watching them develop in the nest outside the Education building at Bartram's for the past few weeks. I miss them.

Here's the tree where Mama was sitting on her nest. You can see it in the crotch of the branch that is third from the left.



The tree is a Redbud and the nest is only about 6 feet high. There's a rock underneath it that I could stand on and stick my camera up above the nest to take pictures (only when Mama was away, of course).

Here she is warily watching me about a month ago when the Redbud was flowering.



Her three tiny bright blue eggs:



The two chicks that hatched (who knows what happened to the third egg). They look like little aliens with clown mouths. Hahaha, cracks me up!



This is what they looked like about a week ago, they're almost too big for the nest!



All last week I stalked the poor robins because I was fascinated with them. Working with kids makes you appreciate the smaller miracles in nature. One day I took a class of third graders by the nest and we all got to see this little miracle:



And then at the end of the week I came in to work and one little robin had already flown away and the other one was testing her wings. She had somehow made it up to a branch above the nest and was sitting there still as a stone while I watched her. I had to go teach and when I returned, she was gone. Ah, life.



Look at how speckley she is!



Good luck little robins.

For the Mamas

I just spent a lovely Mother's Day in NJ gardening with my sister and my mamma while my pops BBQed lunch and dinner for us. I hope all the mothers out there had just as wonderful a weekend.

Here's something I'm making for another mother in my life. D, the mom of the two boys I occasionally sit for is pregnant with their third, a baby girl! I'm knitting a little blanket for her in a simple basket weave design which I've attempted to ravel here.



When I make baby blankets I try to make them gender neutral, like this one I made in primary colors for my friends' new baby (he was new at the time). The current blanket has girly overtones, what with the purple and all, but I think it's different enough and at least it's not pink. I made a lot of progress on it last weekend when I was trapped in Atlanta. D is about 5 months pregnant so I have a healthy amount of time to finish this blanket, time that I will need because my craftiness has really fallen off recently.



We also made a lot of progress on the new community garden this weekend, and I think I am finally ready to spill the beans about it. Things seem to be concrete enough now for me to tell you about the garden without worrying that I'll have to take everything back the next day. So stay tuned!

It's official

I start today!



Yesterday was my last day with the family I've been nannying for and I have to say it was a bit heart-wrenching. The new nanny shadowed me and she hit it off with the girls right away, so I don't worry about them. But there's a little hole in my heart where those girls will always belong. They drew me pictures and wrote letters to me as a surprise and I totally teared up when they gave them to me. Here's the one from Zizi, three (as dictate to her father):

"Dear Erica,

I will miss you so much. I really want to play with you right now and I don't want you to go away. And I want you to stay in your house forever and don't leave the city. And I love you a really really lot, and I hope you like all of these colors on the envelope. And I hope you love everything and I hope you love flowers and green. And I love you, too.

Love,
Z"

Erg, bittersweet day.

I did it!

I got a job in my field!

In April I will start my new job as an environmental educator at Bartram's Garden in West Philadelphia. It's the colonial estate of John Bartram, an explorer and botanist who was a contemporary of Ben Franklin. I've been volunteering there since December and I guess I succeeded in making myself indispensable (insert smirk and nail buff). But honestly, I'm very lucky. I love the people I will be working with and the lessons I will be teaching are so much fun (topics include butter-churning, bees, rivers and seeds!). And I can bike to work! Yippee!

The job is part-time, from 9am to 1pm, and I have something in the works for the afternoons (also in my field, keep your fingers crossed!).

The following pictures are from a visit M and I took to Bartram's Garden in the fall of 2006. The grounds of the estate include a restored house and barn, formal gardens, an amazing collection of trees, a wetland, and a unique stone cider press (below).

Pretty in pink

This is just another little peek into my current life as a nanny. My last nanny post was about the two boys that I sit for occasionally, but as you can see we're dealing with girls here. And these girls are no tom-boys.



A sunny afternoon in the bedroom. Fairy sheets and fuzzy pink telephones.



The carousel at the new Please Touch Museum!



Baby fat and dress-up clothes.

I love these girls but things are hopefully about to change in the work department for me. I'll know soon, so stay tuned!

Snow and Swords

Another snow day today (work day for me).



This is Clark Park, the local park where our farmer's market takes place along with a million other community events. Shakespeare in the Park, flea markets, soccer and frisbee games, doggie social hour, and capture the flag.

That last one is the funniest. Every Saturday about 50 adolescent boys show up at the park wearing capes, are split into teams, given foam swords and shields and have at each other for hours. Just try to walk past that without giggling. I found some YouTube videos of it, check it out.

Getting Started

So I'm sure you all remember my "master plan" and you are wondering what I'm doing to achieve it (because the world revolves around me and you are all paying very close attention). Well, let me tell you.

After I graduated from undergrad I learned the hard lesson that the college degree is the new high school diploma. It means relatively little especially if it's from a liberal arts college. I'm not being cynical it's just true. So the best way for me to get my foot in the door is to volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. I recently "informationally interviewed" someone from White Dog Community Enterprises here in Philly, and she said that a lot of their new hirees started out as volunteers who made themselves so indispensable that she was forced to hire them or lose their talents to someone else.

This is my new mantra, Make Yourself Indispensable.

These are the places where I have decided to focus my efforts:

Bartram's Garden
This is an historic house and estate originally owned by one of the most forward-thinking botanists of the pre-Revolutionary period, John Bartram. I've been helping out with their children's education classes (right now we're doing lots of butter churning classes with a colonial butter churn and I have amazing home-made butter in my fridge waiting for me to bake it into something delish). They might be hiring a part-time gardener for their children's garden this spring, keep your fingers crossed!


(from bartramsgarden.org)

Tyler Arboretum
There are 650 acres of diverse outdoor landscapes and habitats at this arboretum in the western suburbs. I've been volunteering with their education department, mostly doing maple-sugaring classes right now. They have some of the highest quality education curriculum I've ever seen, especially with respect to the diversity of activities and amount of information in each class, as well as the thorough training that each educator gets. I will also be helping them out with their new vegetable demonstration garden, which currently lacks a gardener (again, fingers crossed).


(from the Tyler Arboretum set on Flickr)

Weaver's Way Co-op Farm
One of only two co-op grocery stores in the city, Weaver's Way does community programming on and around their farm in North Philadelphia . I've been volunteering with their education programs, mostly helping to build a greenhouse at Martin Luther King High School which the students will plant and tend. They also do farm field trips which I'll be helping out with soon.


(from weaversway.coop)

Mill Creek Farm
The farmers at Mill Creek are on vacation for the winter, but in the spring I hope to get my hands dirty helping out with everything that goes into growing food on this urban farm (which is not far from my house in West Philly). They also do education programming, mostly farm field trips. The farm is on a small plot of land and has a shed made of cob with a green roof, solar panels, a composting toilet, mosaic, and grey water collection. Loves it.


(view from the shed's green roof, from the blog Mac&Cheese)

Pennsylvania Horticultural Society - Garden Tenders Training
This is the most exciting thing I'm doing right now. It's a free workshop series for people interested in starting community gardens in and around Philadelphia. Did I mention it's completely free? (I just CANNOT believe that). It consists of 10 three hour classes with guest speakers who teach you how to organize, plant, and sustain a community garden. And each year at the end of the training sessions there are several new gardens that were formed right there in class. After the first class I thought my head would explode with excitement. I've already met several people in class who live in my neighborhood and are interested in starting a new community garden (one of whom already organizes a garden at 47th and Spruce and is inundated with plot requests every day).


(from pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org)

So we'll see where all of this takes me. I'm now nannying three and half days a week and the rest of my time is full of volunteering of one form or another. I don't expect to be paid to do anything in my field until April at least, but I'm optimistic. I have a rolodex of over 50 contacts that I have met and/or spoken to on the phone about my interest in environmental ed/urban agriculture and them's good odds, I think.

A Festivus

What lovely comments you guys left on my last post! I didn't expect that at all. I've always had it in the back of my head that I would like to write a children's book and your comments have stoked the flame again. I'm gonna go grab my notebook . . . . . . .

Happy holidays everyone!

Winter Tracks

Tracking

It begins with a blanket of freshly fallen snow.



A sparrow (Passer domesticus) flying above sees a dark spot on the ground. She lands on the ground to investigate and hops about distractedly, creating a weebly wobbly pattern in the snow (sparrows can be such silly birds).



Stopping quickly, a cottontail bunny (Sylvilagus floridanus) carefully sniffs the air. Is there a predator nearby?



Crouching low, the house cat (Felis catus) waits for the perfect moment to pounce. Her eyes narrow in anticipation but she is patient and sits very still. She can make herself appear as small and quiet as a stone.



A woman (Homo sapiens sapiens) ventures out of her warm living room to take a walk in the frozen morning air. She stoops low to see which animals have passed by her door that morning. The tracks she sees tell a story which she reads in the freshly fallen snow.



It began with a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

A Day in the Life

It's winter here in Philadelphia, and that means that all the gardens are going to bed. And no one is hiring me to teach little ones about plants, which I thought might happen. But no matter, I can wait and network and plan, that's what the winter is for. In the meantime, I am babysitting for a wonderful family that I worked for when I lived here before, because a girl's got to eat.



Harry and Arnie, 5 and 3, are the sweetest, smartest, most polite, most creative little rascals you've ever met. I love them to pieces and I want to put those pieces in my pocket to keep forever. Even when they're bad they are loving and smart and reasonable, if you know what to say to them. Which I'm learning, slowly.

Here's a day in my life with these munchkins . . .



. . . the playroom, looking relatively pristine . . .



. . . creative chaos . . .



. . . drinking milk with two hands . . .



. . . "quiet reading time," aka trying to sneakily get a nap in, aka looking at the squirrels outside for an hour and jumping back to look at pictures when something interesting happens in the book . . .



. . . colorful container full of seeds from a "berry hunt" . . .



. . . collecting leaves to make a collage . . .

And there you have it, my life as a nanny. And I love it (for now :) ).