The Fruits of Our Labors

Back in October and November, the service club and Cedar High, of which I am advisor, embarked on a big project. There is a courtyard in the middle of the school, but in the six years since I have been teaching, it has been used usually once by the faculty in the spring when we have an end-of-the-year cookout and potluck lunch. It's been this great space but completely under-utilized and, frankly, really sad looking. So I had the idea for the Athena club to spruce it up a bit.

About five years ago (so people say), one of the clubs planted tulip bulbs out there. I would guess that it was much longer than that because only a few tulips would come up haphazardly around the courtyard, filled in by a lot of weeds and grass. One of the problems for any planting projects is that there is no direct water source; all water needs to come from within the building and can be rather messy. Anything that is planted has a tendency to get cooked by the hot sun, so having a lot of summer flowers isn't practical, hence the spring bulbs. Another issue is the soil quality. There is none. The dirt is hard as rock out there, and after digging around, there are all sorts of 'treasures' such as broken brick, ceramic, bolts... A third problem I encountered when I let the teachers know of the project (in part to beg for funds and help from other clubs) was with the reception I got from a few others at the school. Those who had planted the previous batch of bulbs out there were a little...defensive? Telling me it would be a shame to destroy the ones out there; there were about 500 bulbs currently; that I needed to dig everything up so as not to waste what others had done. I was kind of frustrated. How was I going to dig all of them up when I didn't even know where they were? How was I going to dig at all since the ground was so hard? And with all of the weeds, who was going to tell me what was a real plant and what was garbage? And did these people not remember how few flowers were coming up each spring? Most of what was out there was probably baked dead anyway, not to mention that, according to my sources from various Google searches, bulbs have about a 5 year life before needed to be refreshed. Needless to say, I had absolutely no gardening experience, had bitten off a lot more than I knew I could swallow, and was easily being discouraged by the less-than-helpful comments of some of my coworkers.

But begin we did. We started with a drenching of the dirt and weeding what we could - there was one humongous thistle that gave us a run for our money!! About 15 girls showed up for this. After that we tilled - Ok, I did. In flip flops. Dumb move, but now I know for any future tilling projects what the appropriate footwear is. We were out there for a while, but it helped me assess how much more work we had to do and that topsoil was needed.

A few weeks later came the bulb planting. I wanted the "Secret Garden," so I purchases about 700 daffodils, crocuses, and tulips. But 700 did not seem like nearly enough once we started setting them out. And I didn't buy nearly enough topsoil to feel good about it. And only 7 girls showed up. Seven! Out of three clubs that were invited, including National Honor Society (only 1 showed up from that). And then half of them had to leave early for other things. Two other teachers and I stayed until about 6:30 one night after school finishing up. I was even more disheartened.

And then came the waiting. And hoping. And more waiting. Winter. Thaw. More winter and thaw. And then...

Spring!




Teachers and office staff are emailing me and stopping me in the halls to say thanks. They are eating lunch out there. Another teacher contributed lawn furniture, a bird bath, iron decorations, and bird feeders. It's not the secret garden. There are packed areas and really sparse ones. But it is ours. Success sure is        
                                          sweet smelling!