Flowers for School

Years ago I decided to share the flowers from my yard with my fellow teachers. It was a way to bring my garden into school where I could enjoy it as well. Then it became a challenge to see how far into autumn I could continue to place a vase of flowers on each teacher's desk.

These are the fourth week's vases. The hydrangea blossoms came from my own bush, but the Queen Anne's Lace (carotte sauvage) and yellow Jerusalem artichoke were roadside picks.  

Last week the Black Eyed Susans came from my garden, but the Goldenrod was found by the side of a road and the flower clusters came from another garden in town.

I now have seeds for that flower and have sprinkled them on my tulip bed...they should come up after the tulips die down. Hopefully I will learn the name of those flowers before they pop up in the spring.

These were the vases for the second week...packed and ready to travel via my car. (More about my car in a minute.)

Here the Queen Anne's Lace is its normal white color. The ones I used for the fourth week I let stand over night in water with red food dye added.

It takes a couple of hours to create all 22 vases. I suppose I could do it faster, but why rush something I enjoy? 

There was enough phlox for the first set of vases, delivered on Monday, August 21st. Students weren't arriving until that Wednesday and I delivered these late in the afternoon so most of the teachers had gone home.

I took advantage of my replacement not being in the classroom and snapped a couple of photographs...

It has been 3 years since I've taught in this room and the burlap I left on the bulletin board hasn't been changed.

This was my "olive" tree. My niece, Carol Ann, painted it for me. By the time she got to the leaves it was late in the day so she cleverly cut a sponge into the shape of a leaf and then did a "dip into paint-press on the wall" routine to finish the job before heading back to college. That has to have been 20 years ago!

I used the tree every year as part of the scenery when we acted out Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Movable scenery, like the stone walls kids helped me create, have all vanished. My replacement doesn't do "acting," but no one has painted the walls and so the tree remains.

I still like to encourage reading...this is the back of my car. The small bumper sticker on the left says, "Going to war over religion is killing people to see who has the best imaginary friend." The small one on the upper right says, "Tea Party sounds so much nicer than 'Mob of racists and homophobes.'"

 And I certainly didn't want to waste the space on the car doors!

The other side of the car has "Love Your Mother" with a picture of the earth, "If the fetus you save is gay, will you still fight for its rights?" and "You can tell Monopoly is an old game because there is a luxury tax and rich people can go to jail."

 While I was teaching I decorated my desk. Those bumper stickers are still there....