of biomes and brownies

My school has just celebrated Friends and Family Day. I opened my room up as a visiting spot. No big shows, just students making our potting soil mix, while other potted up our billion varieties of hot peppers. I had the Mighty assistant and some students bake up some lavender brownies the day before. As you may remember the human suggestion box has big time issues with lavender in his food and even tried to have a petition stop me. So there were the parents. And there were the brownies. And there was the man with the suggestions. So I put it all together...

"Could you please hand out the lavender brownies to the parents?" Soon enough they were enjoying the brownies and I was telling the story with the human suggestion box adding details, which of course led to a few minutes exploring the suggestion box.

The teacher, who has landed the job of teaching our youngest students, asked me for some plants for what she was planning for the parents. She was one of several teachers who were focussing on biomes and she wanted to place some critters around real plants. I needed space for my seedlings... clearly it was a win-win situation and our largest plants went out on loan.

What I hope to do by the end of the week is get an e-mail sent out to all the parents (some are here already and that makes me happy) to visit the blog... if you have made it... welcome.

spicy hot brownies, dazed spring, the hope of spinach salad, and a failure

Rule 1: if we cook, it has to come has to have food from the garden. So this week I diced up some of these Joe's round hot peppers and added them to our brownies. Every year before the dreaded killing frost, we harvest a bunch of hot peppers and throw them in the freezer. I never did find a recipe, but I figured that if chocolate and chiles go so well in my favorite Mexican dish (mole' sauce)... then why can't I add them into the brownies. I took out too many of the seeds next time extra heat.

Well, if I drove over to the school right now, this bit of green I saw just outside my classroom would be covered with the snow that has intensified since I got home. On my classroom wall are these words of absolute truth: "... Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches..." from the poem, Spring and All (link is to the entire oh so cool poem), by William Carlos Williams. A friend thought I was praying because I was on my knees getting the photo earlier today.

over half of our spinach seeds have sprouted....

Update: The rice project failed...
theory... too cold in my classroom...
Reality... it just began to smell real bad.

will try again in spring.