Blossoming Indoors

It may be the middle of winter, with threats of snow and lower-than-ever temperatures, but we always keep a summertime frame of mind, as you can see in the picture above!
Each week we maintain our classes at DC Bilingual, CentroNia's Langley Park campus, CentroNia's pre-K incentive program at Harvard Street, Community of Hope, and Columbia Heights Youth Club. Since the gardens at all locations are pretty...well...depressing, we are always coming up with ways to brighten up the indoors and plan for spring. This winter we have studied all kinds of critters with pre-K, Kindergarten, 1st grade, and Community of Hope: Bees, Ladybugs, Butterflies, Grasshoppers and Worms. 1st grade at DC Bilingual is starting an indoor vermicomposting system, better known as a worm bin! With 2nd grade and Columbia Heights Youth Club, we are learning about the many animals and critters that inhabit the garden, and building birdhouses to attract some local winged friends to our gardens. In the 3rd grade classes we are getting down to the very start of it all - the seed and how seeds work. Tasty experiments include popping real popcorn off of the cob and dissecting edamame pods. 4th grade is in the middle of an epic unit on herbs, and will be using their own class-grown herbs to design the herb gardens at Girard for spring.
In other news, we will be inviting new groups into the garden this year: an elementary after-school group from Asian American LEAD's program at Bancroft, and some young women from CentroNia's Saturday Arts Workshops to design sculptures for Girard. Also upcoming: monthly Adult and Family workshops starting in April and weekly volunteer days starting in March. Yikes! We will be very busy bees! You know what keeps us bees going: when our friends and neighbors show up to get their hands dirty with us. If you are interested in participating in any City Blossoms activities this spring, please email us at lola@cityblossoms.org or rebecca@cityblossoms.org .
In the meantime, stay warm and start drooling over seed catalogs! Indoor seed planting season is right around the corner! Hooray!
Cheers,
City Blossoms