Here’s my picture of the garden, two radically different flowers, on tiny fluffy round and one long bouquet of branches, with only one common point: their lovely purple.
I chose this picture that shows a square of dense greenery. I think this illustrates how nature is able to produce a lot by itself. It is an example of what emerges from human inaction. It surely looks like a mess from the outside but is a complex and sustainable ecosystem if we look at it carefully. This might be an interesting thought: from inaction a lot can grow whereas our hands can easily destroy what was alive and well before. Thoughts and photo by Théo.
After a long winter of hardy cooking waste, the Develop’ponts composters are now full. Lorraine has added more straw to dry it out and hopefully finish off the process for us to use the compost by early summer. They will be setting up a new one in the next weeks.
Our Wednesday class decided to get a bit of early planting going before the March rain showers. It’s probably still too cold for the seeds to sprout, but we were excited to be rid of winter and imagine that spring is here. The calendar says so, anyway…
Friday was a day of poetry, invention and medicinals in the garden. Three different project groups from the English section shared their work on a lovely sunny if pollenous afternoon. We had Wordsworth and Dickenson, thyme jelly and cold angelica tea and inaugurated the « indestructable » information stand made from a reused bridge structure and pallet wood. There was a fun exchange about allergies and lots of shared kleenexes before the rain which cleared the sky.
The We Are What We Eat students got our beans, potatoes and artichoke plants in the ground today after recovering the garden from the waist-high weeds. (Thanks ID Vert). It also gave me the occasion to explain the difference between weeds and weed, especially when someone confused the fake strawberry plants for the latter. It appears that no one had any fun at all (or maybe just a little…)
One of the Pontanique gardeners told me that Ecole Normale Sup was doing a spring planting workshop in their garden on Friday. A garden at ENS? In Paris? This, I had to see!
So I set out to see what sort of garden ENS had and found Martin, Hélène, Lu and Adrien working on getting the second year of spring crops into their sweet little garden with other folks from the neighborhood.
Here is their website for the latest events and info.
http://www.ecocampus.ens.fr/
The Jardin was overwhelmed on Monday by the enthusiasm of the Field Trip students eager to get down and dirty, hoeing and planting and weeding and generally preparing the garden for spring.
Lots of great energy that we hope will continue throughout the season.