Alina's Adventures

Springtime, blooms, and all these pretty fences.

 

To avert my gaze was to fall back into something from which I had been rescued, a hole filled with nothing, and that was the word for everything about me, nothing.

Jamaica Kincaid, "On Seeing England For the First Time"

The tulip trees can't help themselves this morning, brimming with buds. It is beautiful-- the fresh neon green of spring, the ground smothered by lavender lyre-leaf sage.

Somewhere in Syria, families are desperately seeking a way to salvage and save lives. The US President issues symbolic bombs in response to a chemical gas attack. One bomb begets another and families continue to suffer. We are willing to drop bombs but not to open our borders. Eager to display vengeance and project power without showing the kindness of an neighbor. 

Bombs have never been enough.

Max's tulip by the Funky Little Free Library.

Max crows with pride over the tulip he planted two years ago-- "Look Mom, it's finally bloomed! Two years and finally, a flower." If only we were willing to grant as much as Syrian families. A tiny plot of soil in which to grow and thrive. Not the destruction of their homeland but the opening of ours.

Despite our religions and morals, we humans remain the world's most territorial mammals. Our commercialized selfishness stares back from billboards, reassures us that "our way of life" is deserved, a birthright. 

What have we done to deserve the safety we steal from others?

 

The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart-- idea of thing, reality of thing-- the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.

Jamaica Kincaid, "On Seeing England For the First Time"

What are we refusing to see when we lament the images of dead Syrian children? 

What darkness do we invite between ourselves and our fellow human beings?

When you sigh with relief that Assad got bombed, how do you describe this emotion to your children? How do you celebrate a bomb? How do you justify the fence we maintain against refugees? 

What blooms in this hardened soil of the American heart?

Hanging out at Hurricane Creek before the clean-up.

Tulip trees 

When the King walked through the door at 5:45, I was ready to catch the sunset at Hurricane Creek. The kids were hungry, but I crossed my fingers and decided to see if the magic of a place might distract them. And it did. 

"Where are we going? What's the rush?"

"I want to catch sunset. I want to catch the way it intersects with the moon at Watson's Bend. I want to smell dusk and the first blush of tulip trees budding."

The King shrugged, changed from his work clothes, and hopped in the car. 

Micah at That Bench

On the drive. Micah reminisced about Mr. Jimmy Watson, and how he attended the clean-up and sat on that bench.

The bench that has become That Bench. Jimmy's bench.

She raced to find it-- her first stop. 

The girls watching Smoky Joe descend towards the creek.

Then back towards the tipi, where Smoky Joe was making his way down to the creek.  

The waters were higher than I've seen them at Clean-Up-- not beginner's waters but swift, high, voracious waters swirled by multiple eddies and rifts. 

John threw a few sticks and Smoky Joe retrieved them from the water. I don't think you realize how quickly water moves until you toss a stick and lose track of it almost immediately. Fortunately, Smoky Joe swims fast and knows his way in high waters. He retrieved two sticks before clambering out of the water to shake his fur dry. 

Micah wandering towards the tipi.

A mysterious yellow flower on the upper banks.

Moon rose behind yellow flowers.

John re-discovered a soft turtle shell from the year before.

The underside of the soft shell turtle.

Max can't stop laughing about Smoky Joe's antics.

The moon rose along the ochre cliffs.

Very high waters downstream from the Bend.

Sunset... setting the woods on fire.

Max regals Renee with stories of feral cats.

Milla emerges from the tipi to announce the first sparks of a kindling fire.

A fire that ended with laughter, joy, and gratitude. 

What you will see when you arrive-- John's tipi, brought from North Dakota to Tuscaloosa. 

If you can make it to the clean-up, please come. 

Learn more at the Facebook Event page. 

If you can't make it, please consider donating anyway to help us sustain the work of our Hurricane Creekkeeper in a very challenging time for waterways and water protectors. We need your help. 

Renew your membership or simply make a one-time donation online. We thank you. The water thanks you. The silent, ignored natural world thanks you. Our planet counts on us to preserve more than we destroy, and to honor more than pillage. 

Aldridge Gardens Plant Sale on April 27th.

A great resource for gardeners, naturalists, and home educators seeking to engage the native plants with their children and families. We had a great time last year-- and our blueberry bushes are flowering!

Aldrige Gardens also offers a menu of special field trips that can be scheduled in advance. 

Experience Their Outdoor Classroom

Curriculum-based outdoor field trips for elementary school students are offered from mid-September through the end of October, and mid-March through the first week in May. Due to the size of the gardens, we request that no more than two classes (or 50 children) attend on the same date. Please provide one adult chaperone for each 10 students. A fee of $4 per student is requested to cover materials. A picnic area is available for outdoor lunch after your field trip.

Field Trip Objectives

Although all Aldridge Gardens Field Trips can be adapted for a particular grade level, listed below is the grade level(s) each field trip is designed for and correlated with the Alabama State Course of Study:

Meet the Trees (Kindergarten)

-Observe, compare, and describe the properties of trees, and parts of trees.
-Compare changes in parts of trees through the seasons.
-Acquire the vocabulary associated with the properties and structures of trees.
-Use oral language to describe observations.
-Observe animals that depend of trees for food and shelter.

Habitat Hunters (1st through 5th grades)

-Discover ways animals use and depend on plants as well as ways woodland plants depend on animals.
-Observe ways that plants and animals in a forest community are interdependent.

A Worm’s-Eye View of Soil Science (2nd grade)

-Demonstrate an understanding of the concept that plants grow best in good soil and that good soil is made by combining sand, clay and humus.
-Differentiate among the properties of soil (color, texture, water absorption, temperature).
-Identify soil types/components (sand, clay, humus).
-Recognize the role of soil in supporting plant growth.
-Use appropriate tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
-Relate structure to function in plants (roots for support in soil).

Worms (Vermiculture) 2nd grade continued

-Demonstrate an understanding of the process of composting.
-Demonstrate the ability to perform safe and appropriate manipulation of living organisms.
-Identify characteristics and behaviors of worms that help them survive.
-Describe how worm offspring are similar to parents (size, shape, color).
-Describe interdependence of plants and worms (recycle plants into nutrient-rich humus, tunnels create spaces in soil for air and water).
-Make compost tea bags.

Plant Propagation: Making More Plants (3rd grade)

-Identify the basic parts of a plant and the function of each part: roots, stems, leaves, flowers.
-Identify the basic parts of a flower and the function of each part: petal, stamen, and pistil.
-Propagate plants using three different methods of propagation: seeds, cuttings, and division, and take their plants back to class.

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Teachers: How to schedule a curriculum-based field trip

Field trips are scheduled weekdays from 9:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Maximum number of students per day = 50

$4 per student. (Free for teachers and parent chaperones.)

Field trips are scheduled from mid-September through mid-November
and mid-March through mid- May.

To schedule a field trip, please email Debbie McDonald, Education Director, Aldridge Gardens at [email protected], or call her at 205-682-8019 Ext. 104.

You will be contacted within one week about your field trip request.

Please include the following information:

-Teacher Name
-Cell or Home Phone
-Preferred Email Address
-Name of School
-School Address
-School Phone
-Name of School System
-Grade Level for Field Trip
-Number of Students for Field Trip
-Month You Would Like to Schedule

Include field trip topic you would like:
-Trees
-Habitat Hunters
-Worms and Soils
-Plant Propagation

Picnic Area is first come, first serve. Please inform Jim if you plan to use the picnic area.

Saturday mornings also offer guided bird walks for Aldrige Garden members. 

The month of March...

Flew past. The month of March beat its wings overhead in a migratory fashion and sought shelter elsewhere.

These days fly by so quickly it's as if time, itself, has chosen an alternate nesting ground. I can watch it pass, admire it's movement, make efforts to pull together a shrine to its moments. 

I've always been prone to this persistent tug to preserve those moments at the cost of full inhabiting them. As a child curled beneath the dogwood with her journal, thinking myself Harriet the Spy of Springtime Events, I remember the compulsion to record changing azalea colors, the scent of fresh bark, the way grass turned neon after rain.

The same inability to let time pass without remark.

The same urge (oh unquenchable urge) to make something more of the lovely singulars.

This hunger that leads me to the page, the photo, the collage, the trail, all of it, onward. 

 

A molehill is, in fact, a mountain to some living being. 

And a moment is a monument to this restless mother. I can't help saving what I love. Savoring it as we live it. Holding the words in my head for someone that might seek them later....