Ramblings

Yesterday we took the youth on a field trip to see a few other community garden in Seattle.  We took them to Seattle Tilth which is an organization that teaches people how to garden.  They have a teaching garden with different methods of doing things with signs explaining each that we took the youth to.  Then we brought them to the Piccardo P-Patch which is the biggest community garden in Seattle.  It is HUGE.  It used to be a farm and the Piccardo family gave it to the city so that it could be used for community gardening.  It now has over 200 10x10 plots.  It was a pretty awesome place.

I'm not the biggest fan of field trips.  I would much rather stay in the garden and work, and I think the youth agree.  But I see why it is important and we want to educate them completely and empower them.  It's just not my favorite thing to hop in a car, drive to the place, and walk around and talk about something.  I am much more of a do-er than a talker.

But I have to say, I did enjoy the car ride.  We had some time to just talk to each other.  The youth kept asking me a bunch of questions: Why don't you shave your legs?  Are you one of those hippies that thinks because men don't shave you shouldn't shave either?  Are you white?  Yeah, but what kind of white?  How old are you?  Shouldn't you get married and have kids soon?  Isn't your biological clock ticking?  What kind of music do you like?  What is New York like?  Is it better than here?  Were you there during 9/11?  It was cool and I got to really connect with a few of them.  It was also interesting the types of questions they were asking me.

Today we are going on another field trip, kind of.  The Parks Department of Seattle gave us some grant money and part of the grant stated that we have to bring the youth to one of the Community Centers for a little while.  I think they are trying to get more people aware of what they provide.  So basically they are giving us money to go have fun with the youth.  So we are not working in the garden at all today, we are going to a Community Center and playing games.  We were going to play frisbee golf but someone else reserved the course.  So I dunno what we are going to play.  I think it will be fun, although I would much rather work in the garden.  It seems like a waste of time.  But they are giving us money so we have to do it.  But also I think it might bring the group together and work on the dynamics of the group and stuff.  So it could be good.  I am going to try to have a good attitude about it.