Asparagus the Beautiful

An asparagus plant ready for making home in the ground. Day 10 of my 30 Day Challenge. All digital on Procreate app.

We went perennial shopping last weekend because I am itching to get things growing. I have decided to enlarge our repertoire with some rhubarb and asparagus. Who knew asparagus started out so….ugly! How did I ever live so long to never see this interesting thing? Tendrils reaching out like skinny octopus legs in browns and grays. They’ll all get put in the ground, though, and up will pop beautiful asparagus

Thank you for our garden plot,

For growing plants of green.

The purple eggplant towers above

Our baby lima beans

Asparagus! Asparagus! tastes great with Hollandaise

And serve up the zucchini, please

And add the basil leaves.

We watered out Swiss Chard each day

And waited for the leaves

With school almost over now

We’ll soon be on our leave

Asparagus! Asparagus! tastes great with Hollandaise

And serve up the zucchini, please

And add the basil leaves.

This song (to the tune of America the Beautiful, if you didn’t catch that yet) was written by a student of mine the year we grew a garden outside the classroom. As the science teacher for the pod’s 4th, 5th and 6th graders, I supervised a large caged-in area on the school campus that theretofore was a bunch of weeds. The kids selected their vegetable seeds (they could do 1-2 starters only), do research on them, plan their little square foot plot, and tend to the garden regularly. Sounds great, doesn’t it.? It was actually a royal pain in the patoot, since it had no natural watering system. Once or twice a week we had to get the hoses out and water in the California heat and/or winds. The kids and I had a love/hate relationship - (I tried to keep my hateful feelings under wrap, of course, which speaks to my infinite wisdom) -with the whole gritty, grimy experience until - you know what? - things started growing! Just in time for school to end, they could actually harvest. Since they grew from seeds, it was pretty dang exciting, and having had that experience in our own garden with a vegetable box garden, I know exactly how they felt. It was worth it, every muddy footprint they slogged into the classroom. There’s something about a garden, isn’t there?

Always trying to access their creativity, I asked that they keep diaries, do botanical drawings, and write songs or poems about their experience. Sadly, I’ve lost the author of the song above, although I remember that he was a 5th grade boy. Perhaps if I run across a class picture, it’ll come right back to me. As always, if you recognize this as one you wrote - twenty plus years ago now - speak up!