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Greetings Parents, Family and Friends of Heritage Baptist Child Development Center!!! Our blog is currently being updated and will have a fresh face! Be on the lookout for our new look soon!!

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to the Father!" Colossians 3:17

The Beginning of a New Era

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
t.s.eliot

The Heritage CDC Learning Garden is alive and well and under "new management."

Stay tuned for new updates and posts.

A moment of silence please...

Our squash plants didn't make it.  We harvested one, count it, one squash which I delivered proudly to the Forest Park Ministry Center this week.  There is some type of worm that lives to invade and kill squash and other gourd plants and those little assassins found our garden.  (Insert heavy sigh.)  Good bye squash, we appreciate the effort.

On a positive note, we have quite a few blooms on our cucumber and tomato plants.  Bell peppers and Banana peppers are growing well.  It is our first year to have Gypsy, Poblano and Cubanelle peppers and they all seem to be doing well also.  We'll call this the summer of the peppers.  =)

On a stinky note, we are always accepting raw vegetable and fruit peels, coffee grounds, egg shells and grass clippings for our compost.  If  you have anything to donate to the compost, please see me or Ms. Ginger Cofty.  Thank you Boppin' Bluebirds for your consistent donations to the Heritage CDC Learning Garden compost!

Mistakes = Experiments

It's that time of year again in the Heritage CDC Learning Garden, spring 2013.  We have planted something old, something new, something borrowed but I don't think there is anything blue.  We planted 3 different hot/sweet peppers, 2 banana peppers, 2 green peppers, 2 cucumbers, 2 tomatoes and 2 squash.  We moved the celery we were attempting to re-grow to a smaller pot to make room for the cucumbers.  The DandyLions also helped plant pink Begonias in our flower boxes and then helped water everything!  The helpers were rewarded with an opportunity to grow something for themselves...garlic.  Don't know if anything will come of the attempt to grow garlic in small pots but as we've come to learn, any mistake made in gardening is really just an experiment.  And while we are on the subject, we've "planted" 20oz soda bottles in the containers as well.  After making holes in the bottoms we placed them in the soil hoping that when we fill them with water the water will go straight to the root of the plant.  Couldn't hurt to try, right?

Once again, we pray for rain to fill our rain barrel so we can use good water to water our plants and we pray that God will bless our efforts so we can help others.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Another winter has passed and we have once again harvested and delivered cabbages and carrots to the Forest Park Ministry Center.  This winter we tried to grow broccoli and cauliflower to add to our garden bounty.  Due to a certain "farmer's" inexperience, the broccoli and cauliflower did not make it to harvest but as always every experience is a learning experience so we'll try again next year. 

We are trying something new with celery this spring.  Check it out if you get a moment!
http://chickensintheroad.com/farm-bell-recipes/re-growing-celery/


As I am typing this I am listening to "Come Thou Fount of Blessing" by Mumford and Sons. This song is a great reminder to us to remember to praise our Father for not just our blessings, but the opportunities to praise Him in sharing our blessings with others.  Thank you God for the opportunity to share blessings with others. Please find our gifts pleasing to you. 

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love. 

 

 

 





Planting Seeds

This week we planted for our fall harvest.  We planted 3 cabbages, 2 broccoli plants, 2 cauliflower plants, 2 large pots of carrots and 1 small pot of carrots.  When planting the carrot seeds I took time to plant them at the right depth and dropped them in with care.  As I was doing this I was reminded of the parable of the farmer who goes out to plant his crop.  You can find it in Luke 8.  Most of us know the basic parts of this parable, how it pertains to hearing the word of God and how we should "plant" the word of God in our hearts and in our minds.  As I was putting the seeds into the little trench I had made I thought about how important my job is at Heritage CDC.  It's important for me as a teacher of small children to invest and instill in them the seeds of God's love. Even more, as a parent it is important for me to invest and instill in my children the seeds of God's love. Thank you God for the reminder this week, I love others because you first loved me.  Bless our cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peppers and herbs as we grow them to show others that you love them too.

 

Luke 8 

4While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: 5“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. 6Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

When he said this, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

9His disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,

“‘though seeing, they may not see;

though hearing, they may not understand.’^a

11“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 12Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. 14The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 15But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

The Very Busy Spider

We have our very own "Very Busy Spider" in the Heritage CDC Learning Garden!  When I was out in the garden contemplating whether or not to start pulling everything up I found her.  A spider that had spun a web between the butterfly bush and the green pepper plant.  In the middle of the web is a series of ball shaped sacks.  I love spiders.  I love them in books.  I love them in songs.  I love them in the garden.  I admire their work ethic.  I admire their diligence.  Needless to say, I left everything in the garden for one more week...who knows what other spiders might need a place to spin a web?

"The autumn days grow short and cold;
I'ts Christmas time again.
Then snows of winter slowly melt.
The day grows short, And then...
He turns the seasons around,
And so she changes her gown;
Mother Earth and Father Time.
How very special we are
For just a moment to be
Part of life's eternal rhyme."
Charlotte's Web by EB White

It's an Eggplant!

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  Is it a boiled egg?  It's an eggplant!  We have white eggplants growing in our garden and we are pretty excited.  About the only thing I know about eggplants is that is best served in lasagne or as a parmigiana and is usually big, oblong and purple.  Our eggplants are small, round and white...basically like an overgrown boiled egg.  Here are a few fun facts about eggplants for your education and entertainment.

1. Eggplants aren’t REALLY vegetables, they’re berries. Which isn’t that strange, considering other fruits are commonly mistaken for vegetables – like tomatoes.
2. Eggplants and tomatoes are actually related. They both belong to the nightshade family with the famous literary poison – deadly nightshade. But don’t worry, eggplant isn’t toxic (at least not in normal amounts).
3. A study published in 1993 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that eggplant has by far the highest level of nicotine of any vegetable. But it’s such a small amount that there’s really no need for concern. You would have to eat between 20 and 40 pounds of eggplant to consume the amount of nicotine you’d get smoking one cigarette.
4. But eggplant had a bad rap before it’s comparison with cigarettes. Ancient Persian philosophers ascribed all kinds of ailments to them – from pimples to epilepsy.
5. People in the U.K. called them aubergines. The word “aubergine” goes all the way back to the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. The eggplant is believed to have originated in India, where it is considered to be the King of Vegetables.
6. The word “eggplant” that we use in North America comes from British-colonized India, where at the time, a small, white, egg-like variety of the vegetable was all the rage.
7. In Renaissance Italy, it was called a mala insana or “crazy apple”.
8. Japan even has a proverb about eggplant:
   “The happiest omen for a New Year is first Mount Fuji, then the falcon, and lastly eggplant.”

The rain rain rain came down down down

"The rain rain rain came down down down
In rushing, rising riv'lets,
'Til the river crept out of it's bed..."
~Winnie the Pooh

Well, maybe not quite like that but we've had 2 days of rain this week...hallelujah!  Our peppers are multiplying.  Our tomatoes are finally turning red.  Our cucumbers are blooming but we've no produce as of yet.  I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the cucumbers just yet.  Maybe a few more Winnie the Pooh rain showers and we'll have some cucumbers to discover and donate.

There's always a first time.

We are nearing the end of the first week at Heritage CDC in 16 years without our beloved Ms. Bama.  It has been a week of reflection and time to remember our sweet friend through stories and sharing memories and although it has been tough at times, there have been more smiles than tears in our first week without her.  We miss you already.

The first delivery of our summer produce will be next week.  The hot weather has not been kind to our cucumbers, they really seem to be struggling in the heat.  The peppers however, seem to be loving the sunshine.  We will have quite the haul for the Forest Park Ministry Center with serrano peppers, banana peppers, green bell peppers and cayenne peppers.  It's been fun to see the different varieties as they have bloomed.  Trying to be patient to watch green things turn red has been tough and trying to explain to 3 year olds that it's "not ready to pick" makes me feel like a broken record. 

Our first time to harvest our herbs will be next week also.  I've been doing a little research on trimming rosemary to use straight from the bush.  I'm hesitant because I'm not really sure how much to trim...but hey, there's a first time for everything, right?

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember, and there is pansies, that's for thoughts."  ~ Shakespeare



http://www.ehow.com/how_8182887_use-rosemary-off-bush.html

Baby it's hot outside.

I think it rained just about every day the week of June 11th.  I don't think it has rained since and the plants are starting to show it.  With the help of the Bluebirds and Robins we've watered the garden but the cucumbers are just not coming in yet.  We have a few banana peppers, a couple of green peppers and our cherry tomatoes are doing okay.  Keep your fingers crossed that we are blessed with a cool rain very soon...our rain barrel is getting low too!

Sophmore Season

It's our second spring planting and we are hot! hot! hot!  No, seriously, we're hot.  We have a cayenne pepper plant, a red chili pepper plant and a serrano pepper plant.  We also planted green peppers and banana peppers and for that odd bit of flavor a white eggplant.  Here's the kicker...I just found out that if you plant hot peppers near mild or sweet peppers they will be hot also.  So guess who is going to have spicy banana peppers, spicy green peppers and spicy white eggplant?  Yep...us, but I don't think the families at the Forest Park Ministry Center will mind.  They might just appreciate a little spice in their usually sweet and mild dinners.

It's also our second season of composting.  We were able to fortify all of our pots with our homemade fertilizer and evidently some of the seeds in the compost survived the break down phase.  We have 2 tomato plants, a pumpkin and 5 or 6 squash plants coming up in the most unusual places.  What can we say?  We love to surprise ourselves!

New additions to our garden for this spring.  We put a bigger pot around the base of our butterfly bush.  It's looking awfully proud and standing tall as the center of our garden.  We created 2 strawberry "fountains" and lined the sidewalk with impatiens.  The DandyLion class of 2012 each chose and planted an impatien as a way to say "so long!" to the CDC.

If you get a moment, walk out the back door and look to your right as you walk down the sidewalk.  See some of the wonderful things that God is doing and your children are discovering this spring at Heritage CDC.

Time to wake up the earth...

Soon it will be
Time to welcome, to
Ripen and sweeten
And so we
Wait for the
Berries we love to
Enter the garden
Red and juicy
Red and sweet
Yes!  we have STRAWBERRIES!

Seriously...we have strawberries in the garden...welcome spring!

And we're out...for now.

We have just completed our first year of summer and fall gardening.  Woot! Woot!  We harvested 6 small heads of cabbage, two handfuls of cilantro and a couple dozen short stubby carrots and delivered our haul to the Forest Park Ministry Center on Wednesday of last week.  Overall I give our first garden a B+.  As we evaluate the learning garden I think we will find that we achieved some of our goals and missed on a few as well.  There are plenty of areas to expand on what we did right and improve on what didn't go so right.  I'm proud of our children and their hard work and willingness to help in the garden any time we asked.  I'm looking forward to how much better our garden will be in 2012.

In February and March we will be continuing to build our compost so the soil for April's planting will be rich and full of nutrients.  So keep the egg shells, used coffee grounds and raw vegetable peelings headed our way!

Just go for it.

We have carrots!  Okay...I have to be honest.  I had given up on these little guys.  I wasn't seeing any real progress the last couple of weeks.  Now, I read articles and watched videos on growing carrots and every one of them stressed the need to "thin out" the carrots.  I get the idea and understand the importance on removing weaker plants to give room for the stronger plants to grow.  I guess I became emotionally attached to each seed as I planted it and can't bear the thought of it not realizing it's potential to be a carrot.  But today, with the help and support of one of my gardening friends, I just went for it.  I dug in there and started pulling out the little stalks and left as many big stalks as I could.  I guess in a couple of weeks we'll see if I made the right decisions.  What a lesson in life...how do you know if you are making the right decisions?  We can read all of the books and watch great videos but really when it comes down to it we all need common sense and a loving friend to tell you to just go for it.  If I had a New Year's resolution to consider it would be to not spend as much time overthinking things.  I think I'd like a year of just going for it.  Who knows what great things might happen?

BTW...just in case you were wondering about the watermelon...the first frost was not kind to our watermelon vine.  Definitely not a fall plant.

Cabbages, carrots and watermelons? Oh my!

Fall is my favorite time of year at Heritage CDC.  There is a nip in the air, the leaves are changing colors and we get to go on field trips to the Fire Station and the Pumpkin Patch.  This year, we are adding to our fun and learning by having a fall garden.  At the end of September, the DandyLions Kindergarten class worked to empty the compost bin and helped fertilize the soil for our containers.  By the end of our "work day" we had planted 8 cabbages, filled 3 large containers with carrot seeds and found a bazillion worms.  (Remember that worm farm I wanted?  Patience pays off sometimes.)  The Rockin' Robins and Boppin' Bluebirds began taking turns watering the garden and will begin observing and recording the growth of our cabbages and carrots next week.  Fall is my favorite time of year and I'm excited to say this may be the best one yet!

Oh and remember the pumpkin we grew by accident?  Evidently a watermelon seed was dropped in the corner of the garden and now we have a watermelon vine growing like crazy.  Will watermelons grow in the fall?  We're about to find out!

It's time.

"There is a special time for everything. There is a time for everything that happens under heaven. There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pick what is planted." Ecclesiastes 3

It's time to say goodbye to the plants we put in the ground this past spring.  What a learning experience the garden has been this summer!  We learned that cucumbers need lots (and lots) of water to grow.  Did you know that cucumbers can grow up anything, even a wall?  We learned that tomatoes do not grow well when watered from above.  Tomato plants like to be watered close to the stem and straight into the soil.  If you don't their leaves will turn blackish brown.  We learned that Ms. Becky doesn't like the smell of cilantro.  We learned that our red bell peppers take weeks to turn from green to red and we are not very patient.  The experience of planting, tending and harvesting the garden this summer has been a wonderful time of discovery for both the children and myself. 

Since the last week of June, we have donated about 75 pounds of cucumbers to the Forest Park Ministry Center.  (That's like 5 of our Rainbow babies combined!)  We've also donated tomatoes, peppers, cilantro and even the itty bitty eggplants to the families that come there for their physical needs to be met.  Meeting their physical needs with food from our garden opens the door for their spiritual needs to be met also.  For me the best part of this process is knowing that our children have a small part in helping people make big changes in their lives.  And we're not finished yet...did you know that carrots grow in the fall?  They do and we're going to give it a try.  Stay tuned.

Trash to Treasure

I look at my garbage so differently these days.  This spring Heritage CDC purchased a compost bin to go with the newly planted Learning Garden.  It only makes sense.  If we were going to provide an opportunity for children to learn to grow vegetables to help other people we also needed to provide an opportunity for children to learn different ways to take care of the earth God has created.  The compost bin is one of those ways.  I have to smile each time a child proudly shows me the banana peel and coffee grounds they’ve brought to school for the compost.  The children may not understand all of the details of what a banana peel and coffee grounds do for the compost.  How it breaks down and becomes a fertilizer for the soil and how it saves space in a land fill but they do know that they are doing something good for the garden and that the vegetables are given to the Forest Park Ministry Center.

Last month I traveled to Managua, Nicaragua with 14 other people from Heritage Baptist Church to partner with the Open Hearts Ministry in the La Chureca community.  La Chureca is Mangua’s garbage dump.  There is a community of about 1200 people who live and work in the dump.  Our mission was to show the love of Jesus through a medical clinic in the neighborhood surrounding La Chureca and to spend time with children that attend school at the Colegio Cristiano La Esperanza (Hope Christian School) which is located in the center of the dump.  Each day we would enter La Chureca and be amazed at the size of the dump, the smell of the dump and the sights of the dump.  Huge black vultures sat on mountain sized garbage dunes and waited for death and decay to make a meal for them.  Men and women scrambled to the trucks that entered the dump so they could get the best “pick” of garbage from the truck.  Children sat in the middle of garbage waiting for their parents to finish picking through the trash to see if something could be recycled for money.  I can’t begin to describe the acrid smells that wafted in each afternoon.  In Matthew 25 Jesus talks about “the least of these” being the people we should be helping.  I realized that I was seeing the least of the least of these. 

I look at my garbage differently these days because I see the faces of so many sweet children and wonder if they are going to look through someone’s trash today as a means of survival.  I also see the sweet faces of the children at Heritage CDC and am reminded that we are doing a good thing by giving them an opportunity to help others with a garden…and garbage.

It's a Pumpkin!

Check list for the garden.  Great spot that receives morning sunlight, check.  Prime location that the children can see the plants grow every day, check.  Convenient access to water faucet and hose, check. 100 hands to help till up the soil, check.
Our garden began as most gardens begin, with careful planning and design.  I drew out where we were going to place the pots.  I spent countless minutes picking out stepping stones and then agonized where to put them in the garden so the children could have places to stand when watering.  It had to be perfect. We arranged and organized and then rearranged and re-organized to make this the best looking garden ever in the history of preschool gardens. And then it happened.
The plants began to grow.  The cucumbers started vining out and so did this one big thing in the middle of the garden.  I knew the cucumbers were going to have vines running every which way but what was that big thing with those big leaves in the middle of the garden where there wasn't supposed to be anything?  One guess was a squash.  A second guess was a zucchini.  The best guess of all was a pumpkin.  How did that happen?
Remember the 100 hands that helped to till up the soil?  One of them accidentally planted a pumpkin seed in the middle of the well planned and designed to be pretty garden.  Have you ever seen a pumpkin vine out?  It takes over the entire space.
As I lamented the demise of my well planned and designed to be pretty garden to a friend she pointed out that "sometimes the things that are accidents turn out to be the best things that happen to us."  I was reminded of two things that day.  One, I have friends who are very wise and two, life is like a garden.  We can plan and design everything to be perfect but sometimes God plants a pumpkin to give you something better.

One for me and one for you.

Years ago I had this fantastic idea to have a worm farm at Heritage CDC.  How fun would that be?  That plan never quite took shape.  I would still like to have a worm farm one day but in the meantime I'm happy with the garden we started this spring. 
Why a school garden?  School gardens offer numerous benefits to children.  They enhance lives, promote a higher quality of learning and even provide a learning experience for all students.  It's so fun to watch children take ownership of a project.
The Heritage CDC Learning Garden is special because in addition to providing those benefits to our students we are also benefitting other families in our community.  We've partnered with the Forest Park Ministry Center in an effort to extend our learning to also include learning to be a better neighbor and friend.  The Forest Park Ministry Center will use the vegetables we grow in our garden to help enrich the diet and nutition of the families they service.

Hodding Carter, Jr. said "There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots.  The other is wings."  Join us at Heritage CDC as we root our children in God's love and give them wings to share God's love with others.