Does your child’s school need a little incentive to grow—or launch—their gardening curriculum?
Photo by Walton LaVonda, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, via Wikimedia Commons
If so, here’s a great way to get started: The Carton 2 Garden Contest, sponsored by Evergreen Packaging and Kids Gardening.
Photo, carton2garden.com
“Show us your students’ creativity by re-purposing milk and juice cartons from your school cafeteria to either build or enhance your school garden. Educators can engage students in a hands-on experience, creating teachable moments on environmental stewardship, sustainability, and living healthy,” explains the Carton 2 Garden website. “The best use of cartons in your school garden gives your school the chance to win a prize valued up to $2,500 for building or enhancing its garden.”
Photo by Michael Quinn, Grand Canyon National Park, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo, carton2garden.com
The Carton 2 Garden Contest is open to any public, private, or charter K-12 school in the United States. Entries must be submitted by April 22, 2015, so you’ll need to start gathering cartons in a jiffy.
Twenty schools with the most unique carton creations will be announced on May 22, 2015, to win award packages. Sixteen winners in eight different regions will receive award packages, each valued at over $1,000, and four national winners will be selected to receive award packages, each valued up to $2,500 to start or help sustain a school garden.
Each school’s entry must use at least 100 cartons, which will be judged according to their quality, sustainability, and creativity. Here’s a little video to kindle inspiration.
While autographing a stack of my Glamping with MaryJane books, I found this copy with a little spot on the front cover. Perfect for a giveaway!
To win this copy, tell me one thing you’ll do this summer to make your camp-spot a glamp-spot. We’ll put your name in a basket and pull out one lucky winner sometime in the next week or so. Check back to see if you’re the winner!
While you may not turn into Pinocchio every time you tell a lie, savvy sleuths may be able to tell you’re not being honest by merely observing your nose.
The real Geppetto, photo by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo via Wikimedia Commons
Body-language experts say that when you tell a lie, chemicals are released in your body that cause the tissues inside your nose to both warm up and swell. This phenomenon is aptly called “The Pinocchio Effect.” While the swelling is usually too small to notice visibly, it can result in itchiness that leads to touching or even scratching the nose.
“A good liar will have you thinking that maybe the dog did eat the homework.” – Anonymous
Winter is certainly blustering its way around the country lately, leaving its mark in some surprising places (snow in Jackson, Mississippi??) and refusing to succumb to spring’s advances just yet.
Photo by Peter Eimon via Flickr.com
But that makes today the perfect day to share a tidbit of literary wonder called “The Snowdrop” by Hans Christian Andersen. This classic little tale chronicles the emergence of a brave flower that simply cannot wait for spring.
It was wintertime; the air was cold, the wind sharp, but indoors all was snug and well. Indoors lay the flower; it lay in its bulb, under earth and snow.
Photo by Emmanuel Boutet via Wikimedia Commons
One day, though, a slender sunbeam reaches down to the bulb and taps on it. Anxiously, the snowdrop implores the sun to help her break free from the bulb so that she may stretch and grow. But the sun is not yet strong enough. Wait, he tells her. He will be very strong by summer.
Photo by Amanda Slater via Flickr.com
“How long this lasts! How long this lasts!” said the Flower. “I feel a tingling and tickling. I must stretch myself; I must extend myself. I must open up; I must come out and wave good morning to the summer; that will be a wonderful time!”
Déjà vu? I’m sure I just heard you say that yesterday.
And the Flower stretched itself and extended itself against the thin shell that had been softened by the rain water, warmed by the blanket of earth and snow, and tapped upon by the Sunbeam. It burst forth beneath the snow, with a white and green bud on its green stalk, with narrow, thick leaves, curled around it as if for protection. The snow was cold, but light radiated down into it, making it quite easy to break through; and here now the Sunbeam streamed down with greater strength than before.
“Beautiful flower!” sang all the Sunbeams. “How fresh and pure you are! You are the first; you are the only one! You are our love! You ring out the call of summer, lovely summer, over town and country! All the snow shall melt, the cold winds be driven away! We shall reign! Everything shall grow green! And then you shall have company, the lilacs and laburnums and finally the roses. But you are the first, so tender and pure!”
Photo by Jonas Bergsten via Wikimedia Commons
But summertime was far off; clouds shrouded the sun; sharp winds blew. It was weather to freeze such a delicate little flower to bits. But there was more strength in her than even she realized. That strength was in her happy faith that summer must come, and this had been imparted by her own deep desire and confirmed by the warm sunlight. And so with patient hope she stood there in her white dress, in the white snow, bowing her head when the snowflakes fell thick and heavy or while the icy winds swept over her.
And if the snowdrop can hold her own until spring, we can, too. Have you seen your first 2015 snowdrop yet?
Photo by Ian Kirk via Wikimedia Commons
While wandering around the Internet in search of snowdrop lore, I happened upon this charming video by the folks at BBC that whimsically spins the snowdrop’s story for all ages to enjoy. Share, share, share …
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
