The Cut and Mulch Salon

Okay, it was pretty darn cold today, but the sun was out so Mrs. M. said we had to get out and do some winterizing. The first thing we did was cut back the tall grasses outside the 3rd grade windows. We would grab a handful with two hands and Mrs. M would use loppers to cut the stalks off close to the ground. Then we had to fold the long grass a couple of time to put it in a large bag. We filled up 4 bags with the grasses. There is still one more grass plant that needs to be trimmed, but we had to get to the front reading garden before our class time was over.


In the front reading garden we cut back all the mums and mulched them. If we cover up the stems, they should stay nice and toasty during the winter and be ready to bloom again next fall. We all took turns using the smaller clippers to cut the mums back. We had shoveled a trashcan full of mulch and used it all up to cover the trimmed mums.
We had a few minutes to go check on our jar flowers. We were so excited. Many of us who replanted last week have up to 6 plant stems! It's wonderful to see something growing after such a long time of nothing. One of us realized we had drowned the seeds, because when we tipped the glass jar, water seeped out of the dirt. She'll probably have to replant next time, with a few others who still don't have anything growing.

Rainy Day :(

Today we wanted to go outside and winterize our gardens. But Mother Nature thought it would be funny to play a joke on us. It rained. :( So, instead we worked in our plant journals. We took a look at our jar flowers. Those of us who didn't have any plants got to plant new seeds. We had to loosen the soil and take some out. Turns out we had those pretty packed. We found some seeds had tried to grow and there were baby roots, but they were too deep in the soil. Next we took dead plants out of their pots to study the roots. We were surprised how long some of the roots were. Once we took off all the soil, we found 2 worm friends and a roly poly bug. We invited them to live in some of our living plants. Last we used all of our soil, mixed it with a bulb fertilizer, and put it in an aquarium. We planted about 10 bulbs, most of which were tulips. We think the other were daffodils. We will see. Hopefully something will grow.

Mini Paws

Did we mention that we also had 11 mini paws? These are for all our school staff who are not classroom teachers. So last Friday, we wrote all the instructional assistants', specialists' and staff's names on the little paws. We put them in a wagon and went around the school looking for everyone. When we found someone who wasn't busy, we told them what we were doing, found their paw, inked up their thumb, and cleaned them up after they printed. We called ourselves "full-service" because we brought the paint, paper towels, wet wipes and the garbage! We all had a job and it was fun. We didn't find everyone, though, so Mrs. M had to send a e-mail to invite all the rest. They've been coming in all week. The mini paws look great, too!