Two Sundays back Shannon and I followed through on an idea I cooked up last winter.  We would start seeds indoors, organize a children’s morning in our community garden across the street, and lead a hand’s-on, dirt-on-the-knees lesson in, well, all things Plant.

So I started some sunflowers inside, staggered the timing so we had one about six inches tall with its new yellow face and five just green, half-inch sprouts with plump leaves.  We armed ourselves with about a hundred seeds of sunflowers of various heights and colors, two boxes of crayons, and a big bottle of tangerine orange juice.

We had, as we explained to Garretta, our neighbor and grandmother of our first four participants, an educational program.  The explanatory exchange went something like this:

Jason & Shannon: Okay, kids, let’s talk a little about plants for a—

Garretta: You four get on over to that plot and start pulling those weeds!

(Kids shoot from the picnic bench like bees are at their butts.)

Jason & Shannon: Well, first let’s talk about roots. See—

Garretta: Pull those weeds because we aren’t gonna be here all day; we have to go to that park to play in the water.

Jason & Shannon: Damn, Garretta, we have an educational program planned here!

Garretta:  Ha-ha-ha-ha…..

Pulling weeds was a hard thing to keep Kania, Sinai, Courtney, and Caden (ages two to eight) focused on.  Caden (two) wanted to find a worm.  He cried about it.  Caden wanted to use a shovel.  He cried about it.  Kania lent him the trowel.  No, he wanted a big shovel.  Explanations on the wonder of sharing ensued.

So we planted the sunflower with the wee yellow face, asking about and then elaborating on the purpose of the roots, of the stem, of the leaves.  Jason compared the roots of the plant to Courtney’s mouth; they are the way the plant gets its food.  Shannon corrected Jason with the information that the roots bring in the water so that the leaves can make the food.  Jason got confused.  Jason postulated that since the roots also bring in the nutrients, then they kinda do, in fact, bring the plant food, at least as far as his analogy was concerned.  Shannon demurred.  Caden walked over all three phlox plants comprising the border between the plot and the pathway, suddenly happy with his trowel.

We planted the half-inch sprouts as well, and somewhere along the way six more children, another grandmother, a neighbor we’d never met before, and a man claiming to be the brother of Frankie from down the block in the apartment beneath Garretta’s appeared.  Bernice, president of the garden and block association, arrived to tell how the night before she had to hide with her grandkids in the back of the Explorer while her sons, more neighbors, and a very pregnant daughter-in-law wielding a bottle had a stand-off at the Jersey Shore with some jackasses who refused to move their car to let them out of their parking space.  Ten cops had showed.

And along the way, we and our bevy of Brooklyn kiddos very enthusiastically stuffed more than a hundred sunflower seeds into an 8’ X 4’ plot before retiring to the shade tent to color pictures of our educational program, drink tangerine orange juice, and become surprised when the fresh-plucked basil Jason gives everyone to eat turns out to be a real live green that tastes real live good.