Creating a garden in Aguadulce

A few days ago, we all went to Choachi to help the kids create a tire vegetable garden in their school’s backyard. We started off leveling some of the ground, digging up piles of near black fertile soil. The students immediately took to the task, shoveling the soil with vigorously. Each of them were excited to be a part of this new feature of their school, a garden they would soon be able to nurture for themselves.

However, because we only had so many tools, and because we didn’t want a kid to accidentally slam shovels into their fellow students, some of the students had to wait for the preparation to be finished. It felt like I had only turned away for a couple of minutes before out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that a full blown obstacle course had popped up nearby. The children had lined up the tires and were playing a variety of games, hopping and running up and down the tires, racing each other, crawling through and over them, and occasionally rearrange the tires for more games seemingly whenever I looked away.

But soon enough, we needed the tires for the garden itself. Arranging the smaller ones around the largest tire of the group, we created a flower shape, filled in the soil, and began to explain how to plant the seeds and what they would eventually become, basil for pasta, herbs for medicine and tea and others. Arming each student with a small handful, they went to work, planting new life into their garden.