I spent a lot of time working, one way and another, in the Friends of the Heath Free Public Library Book tent. This book sale and raffle is our big fund raiser of the year. The Book Tent is a good place to read, and eat homemade pie a la mode, and to visit. But there is a lot to see at the Fair. Food preservation is a hot topic in the general culture these days, but canning…
The Holiday Weekend started for me on Friday afternoon when I visited the Heath School's Garden Day. The classes have been working before now, of course, but on Garden Day, the whole day is given over to planting, weeding, mulching - and learning. I am impressed with their energy, which I expected, but also with the quality of the child-sized tools they are using. Many hands make light work was certainly the motto on Friday. You may wonder…
On this Earth Day I don't want to lecture about what we all should be doing to protect the environment. I want to celebrate some of the actions I know about in my community that are being done right now, many of which will grow. I am thrilled with the school gardens that are being planted, tended and harvested. They not only supply food, but many lessons that connect with work in the classroom. Heath school has had its…
Over at Garden Rant Mary Gray's guest rant bewailed the state of many school grounds, all concrete and lawn. I am very familiar with the school grounds that she describes, but I feel fortunate that the children in our small town have a very different school experience. The Heath Elementary School, which opened in 1996, was built in a pasture surrounded by woodland. When the school bus pulls off the dirt road onto the driveway it passes a…
Ted Watt has worked with the children of the Heath Elementary School for years, teaching them about the land and the world they live in. One of the blessings of the school landscape is a woodland where the childrren have studied the seasons and phases of life of many woodland creatures and plants. On their most recent exploration of the woods they found - drumroll please - a truffle. I know nothing about truffles, except that they are a…
‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells, And pretty maids all in a row.’ Illustrations of this familiar nursery rhyme tend to show proper young ladies in beribboned batiste holding colorful watering cans with clean hands, but while the students at the Heath Elementary School do all they can to make their garden grow, there is no sign of batiste. Real modern children favor denim…