Herding Cats

The usually responsible Garden Leader took it upon herself to douse her colleagues with the hose.

The 3rd grade girls were using the full size shovels to move mud from one end of the Digging Bed to the other; they were no longer very clean.    

The 2nd grade girls filled the plastic wheelbarrow with potting soil, with no particular use in mind.  

The Dollar Store's plastic wrap was a total failure.  The box collapsed, the cutting edge began to curl, and finding a section that was not over-wrapped by another section became, by the middle of recess, an exercise in futility.

Spinach seeds are round balls, easily held in a palm opened to those with soil filled pots.  It was hot.  Her palm was sticky.  She had fun turning it upside down as we tried to put them back into the packet.

4th grade boys were engaged in serious negotiations beneath the mandarin orange tree, over what I do not know.

And, as usual, the 5th grade girls began to hover around the garden as the 2nd graders left to line up.  As usual, they sent a delegate to ask if I would spray them.  As usual, I said yes.

They know that their teachers and the principal have signed off on their fun; they are being treated as people who can be responsible for the consequences of their behavior.  No complaining, no asking for dry clothes from the nurse, accepting personal responsibility for being wet - I make them recite the rules every time.  

So far, everybody left smiling.  It was a good day.