To me nothing says summer like sunshine and sunflowers.
The living’s easy and the veggies are free.
Stay tuned for a recipe of what you can do with all those hot chilis you’re growing.
Posted for the DP Weekly Photo Challenge – Summer Lovin
In case you didn’t know, I teach middle school. I also started and continue to run a school garden at my school. We have a summer watering schedule, and students and parents have volunteered to come and water the unirrigated portions of the garden over the summer months. But I still like to stop by every couple weeks and check on how things are going, to make sure the equipment is still there, and make sure nothing is broken or destroyed. Unfortunately, vandalism is a big problem when you leave an area of a school open to the public. Sometimes it seems that teenager’s favorite way to enjoy something is to destroy it. This summer though, so far so good.
In my own garden that I see everyday, the growth and changes are subtle and hard to appreciate. But not seeing the school garden for weeks at a time, the growth and changes are much more dramatic. These are some photos from my last visit.
Now if we could just keep all the other garden pests out.
flora (ˈflôrə) noun; the plants of a particular region, habitat, or geological period
–phile: (combining form) denoting fondness, esp. an abnormal love for a specified thing.
I live in California. I grow plants and take photos. I run a school garden and teach Science. I am a floraphile.
This is the tagline for my Tumblr, which is where I post about my adventures as a plant fanatic. It started from a New Year’s resolution in 2012, and this Tumblr essentially jumpstarted my floundering creative potential. It started out with me just sharing other people’s photos of plants, and then I soon began taking my own photos. Then I got a better camera and started taking better photos. I tried to capture the photographic evidence of the beauty I witnessed in my own garden. I wanted that sense of calm and serenity I feel in the garden to be delivered through my photographs. Not sure if I can succeed in this, but I keep trying.
Just the act of creating my own content soon led to other things. Soon the writing began. Then a workshop, an online course, a novel in progress, a slew of potentially mediocre short stories. Then this wordpress blog happened because I needed somewhere to put all these extra words. Frankly, the wordy posts I had been composing about my plants hadn’t exactly proved popular on Tumblr, and every time I posted a short story at least ten people immediately unfollowed me. I have a sneaking suspicion that many Tumblr users refuse to read anything longer than fifty words, but I’ll be damned if they don’t like a pretty picture of a succulent. So now, I’ll just have to subject the blogoshpere of wordpress to all my rants, raves, and unfortunate literary transgressions. I apologize in advance.
This is a collection of some of the photos from my garden that I posted this week.
Originally posted on flora-file.tumblr.com
I guess I need to be more specific when I tell my students “Just stack the bricks over there.”
This photo pretty much sums up everything that is great and frustrating about teaching middle schoolers. They need help following directions, keeping their hands off each other and out of each other’s backpacks, and seemingly just about every other social skill associated with civilized societies. But they can also surprise you with some unexpected moments. The four boys in this photo all acted so cool and unaffected most of the time, like doing anything that required even a dollop of effort wasn’t worth the calories required. But when they were stacking these bricks they were so proud, and they seemed like preschoolers playing with building blocks. Unfortunately their structure did not pass the strict seismic building code in California and had to be scrapped and relocated to the place where they were supposed to stack them in the first place. It was one of those moments that made me laugh while I was pulling my hair out.
Welcome to my life as a middle school teacher.
DP Weekly Photo Challenge: Split Second Story
Euphorbia
There are lots of cool things about nature geometry, but one of my favorite patterns is the spiral. The Golden Ratio and Fibonacci sequence have been used to try to describe this natural pattern that most people consider very pleasing to the eye. The Golden ratio is represented by the symbol Phi (φ), which is roughly equal to 1.618033988… Phi is considered an irrational number because it cannot be expressed as a simple fraction, and its precise calculation requires an infinite number of decimal places and has no repeating pattern of numbers. Irrational numbers are not unusual in nature math. Phi’s better known cousin Pi (π = 3.14159…) is also irrational, and is used to calculate the various intricacies of arches and perfect circles. The natural logarithm is another irrational number used to explain many natural phenomena —
e = 2.71828182845904523536028747135266249775724709369995… I don’t know enough about mathematics to try to explain how these numbers are calculated. I just know that I’ve always found them confusing whenever I tried to wrap my brain around them in math class.
These irrational numbers are responsible for explaining the shapes and patterns taken by the natural world around us. I find it completely appropriate that those things we find most pleasing to the eye seem to defy a neat mathematical explanation. If all the patterns found in nature can only be explained through the use of irrational numbers, it leaves me wondering. Is it the world around us that is naturally irrational, or Homo sapiens quest to define every little phenomenon with a neat mathematical equation?
Some things may beyond the realm of the rational brain. Some things are just irrational. Some things we should just take a step back from and appreciate without trying to explain.
Spirals are twists of nature. Photos of plants twisting.
DP Weekly Photo Challenge: Twist
“The universe is a single flower.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
plant orgy in progress
When most people think of spring and plants they immediately think of flowers. How disgusting. Did you know that a flower is the sexual organ of a plant? Most 7th graders don’t know this, and you should see the look on their faces when they find out. Priceless. I tell them that every time they sniff a flower the plant is using them to perform its sexual biddings. I tell them there are unmentionable things happening between the plants and their little “friends” the birds and bees. I make sure to use air quotes when I say “friends.” Really it’s a depraved nature orgy. And people like to cut the flowers off and display these colorful and pungent reproductive sculptures in their homes. How sick are we?
Personally when I think of spring I think of young, green leaves filling in on the trees and other plants. The leaves are the true workhorse of the plant, creating sugar money in their little chloroplast factories. Sure, they get some help from the stem and the roots as they help collect resources and deliver them, but really the true magic happens in the leaves. They are turning sunlight into food, storing the sun’s energy in their bodies until those calories can trickle down the food chain to all us hungry heterotrophs downstream. Keep your filthy flowers. Give me leaves, and I will know the world will be fed for at least one more trip around the sun.
Compiled for the DP Weekly Photo Challenge: Spring
and, DP Weekly Writing Challenge: Student, Teacher
* disclaimer #1 – this is meant to be humorous and sarcastic. I do not tell my students that sex is disgusting and depraved. I tell them it is wonderful and life affirming and they should all go home after school and engage in it immediately.
* disclaimer #2 – disclaimer #1 was meant to be humorous and sarcastic too.
* disclaimer #3 – I actually do like flowers, even though they are monuments to sinful fornication, and kinda stinky.
intrinsickness 