Groundbreaking!
I took the picture above at the groundbreaking ceremony at baby’s new school today. And when I say “ceremony” I mean, I ceremoniously shoved the shovel into the ground and started to dig the plots. Baby’s school is a Forest School (click here to read about one mom’s description of a Forest school in Denmark) and gardening is integral in the curriculum and for the chef’s lunch and snack offerings (yes, they have a chef!)
Baby’s school’s dining hall (with sweeping views of the FOREST, of course!)
The students have named the garden…drumroll, please…
Squirrely Garden
I believe the name derives from one child’s affinity for a long-lost stuffed-animal squirrel. Though I prefer my squirrels OUT of the garden (i.e. doing yoga in the trees), I love the name for the double (it might be a triple) entendre. Squirrely, as in eccentric: and the garden is sure to be unique and unconventional. I am the CEO of Squirrely Garden (hahhaha best title ever), so I will be sharing more about it as it develops.
Back at Spy Garden…
I looked carefully for signs of spring.
And found lots of garlic popping up.
This one looks like a tulip bulb and I think it may have got mixed in with the garlic bulbs!
Two garlic plants side by side.
This lavender plant has a lovely gray-blue shade to it.
It was the first warm Saturday in a while and it was wonderful to be outside all day,
building a
fire,
roasting marshmallows, swinging, playing catch,
and practicing…
pitching.
Baseball in St. Louis is quintessential spring.
The Spy loves baseball.
It was nice to notice changes to the winter palatte, even if only tiny bits of green. One of my favorite spring sites is the big mounds of topsoil and compost at Fick’s:
Beautiful mountains of dirt!
What are your favorite first signs of spring?
I’ll be happy when I can see the ground again…
Hopes for a quick melt!
My favourite signs of spring are when it disappears closely followed by a long hot summer and autumn peeks out from behind a tumbleweed as it rolls in a most determined way over the arid dusty slope of Serendipity Farm into the Tamar River below…can you tell I am OVER SUMMER! ;) You are welcome to spring and summer…can’t wait to get rid of the pair of them. They are reprobates. Love the tulip in the garlic patch…sort of a riff on the theme of “lonely little petunia in an onion patch” but with more Spy Garden class ;)
hahah fall is my favorite too. But spring is a close second, especially after so many zero degree days this year!
Zero degrees? Now you are JUST SHOWING OFF YOUNG LADY! (Yes….that was shouting ;) )
What a wonderful school dining hall!! And lovely photos of the first signs of spring. I love those days when the first shoots start appearing, and then the earliest flowers – here in England our snowdrops are out now, and the hazel and alder catkins. Then we really know winter really is almost over (except those years when it isn’t – and we get an unexpected heavy frost or even snow in April! Grrr.) After weeks (well, months!) of rain and storms we had sunshine yesterday – a proper calm, sunny day. Even the bees braved the outdoors, they were staggering back to their hives weighed down by snowdrop pollen…Come on Spring!
We are definitely not out of the woods yet when it comes to snow and ice and well-below freezing temperatures. But yes, I love seeing the first shoots and blooms too!
My first sign of spring are the snowdrops that I planted against the foundation so that they’d come up extra early, usually in March. Hopefully, the next few days will be warm enough to start melting the two feet of snow in the yard, so they can start poking up through the ground. Kinda jealous of your long day outside…Oh, well, soon come, mon. :-)
That is a good idea about plants being next to the foundation for warmth. It was definitely nice to have a warm day, though there are probably quite a few more cold (and maybe snowy/icy) days to come here before spring. Hope your snow melts quick!
I just saw on the weather that another polar vortex is predicted mid-week :-( so yeah, I guess it will be a while yet before the snowdrops bloom!