Why teaching and gardening are similar

Today was a much better day.  I vowed to give ALL my kids my best today and start all over ready to inspire them, care about them, and hopefully teach them a thing or two (maybe even about science.)  I started my new found recharge right from the beginning. 

On my way to work at 6am yesterday I was being tail gated big time.  I tried everything I could think of to get the person to back off.  They would for a minute then start at it again.  Today, a different person felt the need to do the same.  I just pulled over in a turn lane and let them past deciding that I could only control myself and that I could also at the same time protect my self from the stress and danger that person was putting me in. 

Really though the best part of my day was my last hour in the greenhouse listening to the gentle spring rain outside and spending quality precise time with my fragile little seedlings.  As I worked I found an inner peace that comes to me when I am immerse with my hands in the soil and giving life to each little plant that will in turn give life to my family.  Having never given "life" physically to a being of my own type, I find such an inner peace and sense of contribution with each little plant that makes it to adulthood. 

I also found myself in a deep contemplative state, allowing my brain to form analogies and make sense of my world through the lens of safe unconditional loving relationship between me and my plants.  Here are the thoughts that crossed my mind boring deep into my soul:

1.  I miss having wise elders.  I dearly miss Larry McGraw, my gardening mentor who was 80 when I met him, and "80" when he died some 5 years later.  He taught me how to train plants, that trees had temperaments and that all varieties of apples, plums, pears deserved to be saved because they had some value.  There is not a day that I don't see a raven that I don't think of him and wish that I could just ask him 100 more questions about plants and trees.  Mentors like him are few and far between in this world and I continue to ache at the absence of having a wise elder teacher such as Larry in my life. 

2.  Gardening is a lot like teaching kids for better and for worse: Here is why:::

• When preparing soil you can't just dump all the water one time into the tray and have it absorb.  You must sprinkle it with water slowly several times if you want good dirt to become moist.  This is the same if you want knowledge to sink in.  You can't drown a kid with it once then never do it again.  It will just all run through them.
• The highest maintenance plants, like kids, usually have something amazing to offer when it is all said and done.
• Transplanting little seedlings, like linking new thoughts together, must be treated with the utmost care.  You can't just transplant a news seedlings by force or else you brake the fragile but essential root hairs causing the plant to wither and die a few weeks later.  New concepts are just as fragile.
• Unfortunately, it is all to easy to justify discarding a plant or child that seems to not be thriving or is broken.  You have so many seeds, so it usually makes more sense to start a new plant, rather than go back and fix a broken plant or kid.  We have 147 million orphans for this reason (and that is just the number of kids who have lived through the system.) and way too many drop outs.
• When I transplant little seedlings to a bigger container it feels like they are moving up a grade, and like getting new students, I always am sure to plant new seeds in it's place to continue the cycle of growth. 
• Without good soil, not much else matters.  I can do everything for my plant/student, but if I plant the seeds and thoughts into garbage, they just won't grow.  Kids who don't have quality nutrition, unconditional love, adequate attention, reasonable boundaries, support, are living with lousy soil.  All the water and sun in the world, won't make up for the lousy foundation.  As parents, teachers, society, we must build up good nourishment from the bottom up. 
• We learn through trail and error.  Last year I planted 35 basil plants.  We ate and made a lot of pesto.  This year, I plan on doing less.  It took up too much space and as a result many of my tomato plants did not have enough space and I lost the plants.  Kids minds are a delicate balance between telling them, showing them and allowing them to experiment.  But ultimately if we limit their growing space, the whole child will fail to have enough space to form good roots and will wither. 
• Plants and kids are resilient.  There have been too many times I have wanted to quit on a kid or plant and I was pleasantly surprised.  We are too often taught that development is a finite science when it is just an estimate.  Trees, fruits, vegetables, and kids develop according to a huge set of variables and it is not WRONG for them to do it early or late, it is just different.  It is me that is wrong to assume that development is on a timer. My job is to keep nurturing, watering, teaching, weeding, and providing light to the things that I want to see grow, and also to enjoy them at each stage, because it rarely last for long.
• You lose some plants and kids no mater how much you try to save them.  It still stinks.
• Last but not least, when you teach a child and you grow an edible plant, they will both grow up to feed society with their gifts they have born throughout their lifetime.  It is my hope their fruit will be sweet, pure, compelling, productive, beautiful, and nourishing. 

This was a graphing project we did to demonstrate how the sunrise and sunset changes throughout the year based on latitude and season.

At the end of my dear friend Larry's life, he could no longer hear, he could not taste one of his precious apples, he could barely see.  All he could do was speak, tell his stories and share the wisdom of his years of trial and error.  He was like a plant desperately tying to carry on by offering the world the seeds of wisdom, hoping someone would water it.  As a teacher of many young minds, I guess this is my hope too, that someone will be nourished and empowered by the knowledge that I have to share.