Garden Gone Wild

 Before we start, I wanted to show you proof that, at times, Grandma's Garden is neat and organized.

2019

There is always a plan. 

Unfortunately for the plan, there are always children.

Those children need to dig and to plant and to toss seeds with reckless abandon thus destroying any hope I might have had to bring order out of chaos.  

Combined with the recent rains right at the flowering and growing window

potential mandarin oranges making their first appearance in Grandma's Garden

and their charmingly enthusiastic participation  (repeated every few weeks because, well, why not?) and my absence {due to their Spring Break and my life} today, when I arrived with the kindergarten 

I could only say Wow!

They aren't weeds, because we planted them so, by definition, they are the right plant in the right place. but whatever they are they are taller than a 6 year old.  

Did I mention how much they like to dig?

There is nothing there.  They are just digging.

That perfect set of white bows just slays me, as does the fact that she and her hair are down there, getting dirty.

No one is excluded on our Kind Campus, especially when she brings her own tools.

And speaking of those tools, it's not like I offered them up as an activity.  They were neatly stacked on the bench when I walked in, and then they were being carefully and appropriately used, albeit in random places and to no apparent purpose other than the act of digging itself.  

Along with the tools, the little fiends discovered the sidewalk chalk in the little blue tub beneath the tools, on the bench, unopened but easily disinterred from the flimsy plastic and turned into wall art for the ages.

Again, no one asked permission and no one misbehaved.  They were seasoned gardeners and knew just what to do.  

After discussing the flowering mandarin orange tree's magnificence, I offered them scallion-infused -super-powers. They were more interested in eating the lettuce than expanding their palates with a sharp taste, and I sent them off with home grown lettuce in their fists and their mouths, returning 

chalk and a tool to join the collection created by two young men who collected those left behind and stacked them neatly on the bench.  

I hadn't assigned the task.  As the whistle blew to end recess, I made a general announcement that the tools and the chalk should go back where they started out.  While politicians are busy creating a list of banned books,  I'm reaping the joys and benefits of kindergarten teachers who are making civic minded Americans, one little human at a time.