So that's where all the orgasms went.

Now before you go getting all fired up over the title, hear me out:

After a complaint to Green-thumbed Sammy Dingee about the tiny flies all over the soil and plants in the garden, she offered some comfort by reassuring me that, ‘Oh, they are probably eating some orgasms in the soil’. Hmmm…organisms?

Thanks to a reminder from my perceptive niece, Aislinn, I must correct my last post as this will no longer be my last few months in China…more like my last 12. An epiphany struck me like a dump truck on Sunday afternoon. It had been a gorgeous weekend and we had been to the beach an hour away the day before. I was outside cleaning, pruning and watering my house plants and setting up my little corner for guests to enjoy the sunshine when I realized, ‘I’m going to miss my plants…and my corner, and my family here, and the school, and the trips, and, and, and…” I thought maybe a good sleep would cure these feelings of uncertainty, but Monday just provided more logical reasons to stay put for another year. It was the first time I made a pro-con list that actually helped me make a decision. I still decided to torture everyone around me with desperate pleas for guidance, but the longer the day went on, the more I realized that the decision to stay another year was the right one.

I reported my decision to my principal at 10:30 on Monday night, two hours before the 12am deadline and I am so relieved to have just made a decision that quickly for once in my indecisive life. Another year means the ’big’ increase in salary next year which means more savings and another year of experience under my belt for the next big move. While New Zealand would (and still could) be a great experience, and my God the thought of another year of Chinese men when I could be landing squat in the middle of the Men’s World Rugby Championships is heart wrenching, I am very much looking forward to having stable employment at a job I love and the luxury of many more trips in and around SE Asia for another year. Plus we’ve got a great crew of people here that are very much like a big family and our China parents Ross and Mariya Henderson may also be returning to us !

Back to our garden, today I got to bury a beautiful songbird; yet another victim of our notoriously sky-like glass-lined stairwell. The birds think they’re heading home and BAM – right into the glass. There have been more casualties than I would like to see, but today’s was one of the prettiest birds I have ever seen. We will have to get some sort of posters or stickers on the glass to keep this from happening. It kills my soul.




We have beautiful flowers in bloom in the Grade 8 bed. And the lettuces, carrots, and tomatoes are still going strong. I am apprehensive to feed these greens to anyone except for the cleaners who seem impervious to suggestions that they cease watering the plants with filthy fish water. Obvious reasons for this request include:
o Fish live in water. If you take the water away from the fish, they will die.
o Fish poop in water. Fish poop is gross. Poopy fish water being put on our plants
that we want to eat is also gross.

One bonus for the fish this week is the pump which finally got installed. Fish Group #3 are swimming around with great fervor although they are still quite skiddish of the kids when they lean over to look at them.



Farmer Jamie with his crop:



Two of my grade 8 students trying radish:



Yae Eun does not like:

After an amazingly wonderful and refreshing 2 week break for the Chinese New Year, we are back at it for our second and final semester at ISNS. I am confident that with this being my last few months in China, the time will fly. There are still a few trips, long weekends, birthdays, and various other events planned for the next few months that we are all looking forward to. I can recall this time last year being very tedious. It just seemed to drag on and on with ugly gray skies looming behind dirty gray buildings. I was ready to go home in April…a bit early seeing as how I had a flight booked back to NB for the 11th of July!

Things are a lot better this year. We’ve got a real sense of family established here on campus. A lot of the ‘young’ crew that I get around with are all on the same floor and we’ve all got cute little daily activities and hobbies together. A few of the girls get up (almost) every morning and workout at 6 am. We had been doing P90X and just started the ‘Insanity’ workout Monday morning. Getting up when it is still dark to workout used to be something you couldn’t have even bribed me to do with the promise of Bailey’s in a coffee afterward, but we really enjoy our little routine and it is more motivating to get up when I know that there are other people relying on me to be there.

The school year is much more enjoyable this year as well and structured in a more ‘normal’ fashion. It was hard to come back after a month off last year when I had been traveling predominantly by myself and all my friends and acquaintances had been on group trips. I certainly did not have the same bonds with my co-workers last year as I do this year. Despite the fact that I was friends with the same people, we now have much more in common and have shared more experiences in travel and work and leisure so it makes life here much more enjoyable.

I have digressed so I will try to remain focus on the topic of the blog itself, le garden!



I was amazed with how much the garden had grown over the break. I was not sure if anyone was going to be around to keep it watered, but there must have been help from somewhere, whether it was mother nature or a green-loving maintenance person, because the lettuce, radish, carrots and tomatoes (still no fruit) took off like rockets!






I’ve been told that an advertisement in the local entertainment and event magazine ‘That’s’ promoting the school has included ‘An organic garden developed and maintained by students’ as a selling point for the school. Despite reported grammatical and spelling errors, it’s exciting to know that our garden has become a highlight of the school!

The Grade 3 teacher has approached me with a request for her students to plant some pea seeds in the garden, and just in time to meet her request, another row of dirt has been added along one of the walls.
It has been difficult at times to incorporate the garden into the Science units when we are talking about things like optics and heat and flight. I have been designated the Science Club Teacher for our Activity period this semester, so I hope to utilize that time and dedicate some time with these smaller groups of students to studying and maintaining the beds. I would also like to incorporate some actual cooking with the foods since so far, most of the greens have just been growing and not put to into anyone’s bellies.

Oh...and another stellar update: we have a rat infestation on 6th floor. Here's one of our little friends that got caught in a rainstorm one evening last year.
Can't wait to come across one of these little guys in my room.

An Update from the Grade 12s

I am slightly dreading what I will be met with upon my arrival at school tomorrow. If our school plants are looking as wilted and feeble as my home plants, it is not going to be a pleasant start to the week back after a two week holiday!

Here is the most recent photo of our garden - looking good!









GRADE 12 Blog UPDATES:

I hope our school garden will go well as we have planned and get all the materials needed. Most importantly, I have high expectations towards our little plants! I am really looking forward to see the fruits or flowers to bloom someday! I have so far sketched a plan about how our little garden should look like, and also planted 3 seeds of a type of flower in a recycled "paper" pot. I've learned a lot about planting, things that I usually wouldn't know, such as how much soil is needed, how to mix ratios of soil and fertilizer, what type of plants are suitable for certain types of weather, etc. To me, this is a very meaningful project, because it gets us learning more about the environment, and more importantly, knowing about the global concerns. It also triggers the little children's curiosity and they might develop an interest in farming! *----* Children nowadays don't even bother to learn about planting and farming as they live in urban areas where there isn't any greenery. Let's plant our earth green~ :D

Ji Su


Didi G12
Blog Update

A lot of things have happened in our school garden over the past month. The beds are ready, filled up with soil and the pond has been constructed and filled with water. We have planted a quite a number of plants on the beds and most of them have successfully sprouted. The pond has been filled with water plants, some rocks and best of all; fishes have inhabited it. As of now, everybody seems to still be enthusiastic about the garden and willing to take care of it. It is December now, so the temperature has significantly dropped. Growth of the plants seemed to have slowed down a bit, but hopefully they will do better in the spring. This garden seems to be going well and is bound to have a great future.


Blog Update:

In the past few months, our garden got more lively: we had out little pond with fish, stones and plants in it, three pots of big plants, and our seeds germinated and started growing! Everything is fun and exciting, except for the tragedy of our fish dying one by one. We had about nine initially, but there are only three left now. I'm looking forward to adding more facilities and fish inside the pond- we really need a filter and someone needs to clean the pond every single day so it's not dirty. Everyone, especially the little kids, love to look at the fish swimming around. The kids are always curious about our garden, and they always ask me 'what plant is this?, when will they grow?'. I feel very happy watching our (Jisu & I) garden bed having some leaves coming up. We planted flowers & radishes, although initially we tried sunflowers, but they failed us. We are praying that our radish will grow successfully because we tried to move some seeds away from each other. Overall, this garden project is an awesome idea and thank you Miss Dingee for coming up with this supreme idea! :D We enjoy this alot & this is actually the first time I touched soil with my bare hands lol

Frances




BLOG UPDATE
A number of things have happened in our garden over the past month. To begin with, our class planted more plants in our garden. Sometimes, we went to the garden to plant during the class. We used shovel to dig the soil and planted.
Moreover, our class sprinkled the plants before the class started or during the class, therefore many plants such as tomatoes and zucchini grew bigger and taller. Especially my plants which are zucchini grew very fast and healthy, while, Andy’s zucchini was not growing and it died.
Furthermore, we decided to make a place to raise some fishes, therefore there were a lot of fishes in our garden. Also we put the pebbles and little plants to make more environmental for fishes. However, several fishes were died because of lack of oxygen, not enough water and little kids. Thus, we put more water using a hose.
To sum up, I think our garden becomes better and better. We have enough plants and fishes, even if, we need to promote the students and teachers to visit our garden. So they can give us good ideas about the garden.

By: Bo Whan