The Day the wind kept blowing...

 

 ...and blowing and BLOWING!

 

For over 12 hours with unrelenting ferocity, the wind howled down the entire length of the West Coast...transforming our landscape over the course of one day.

So how did our school garden cope...time for a look...

 Not too bad actually, quite a bit more light coming in from the Buller High School side, with a few less trees to offer shade...

 Nothing to really loose your head over...

.... was there Darth Vader!

 Sadly NO Tamarillo this winter...but at least we still have our trees!

 Not a single blade of pea straw left of the pea straw bale retaining wall, and not a single leaf left on the pumpkins.

As for the Jerusalem artichokes...not a trace left.

I guess we won't need to weed this corner!

 Only two casualties in the Mother Earth Orchard...this apple and our avocado tree.

 Nothing left of our bean and sunflower tee pee...but only the lid missing from our orchard worm farm!

 So how did the rest of our school grounds fare?

Looks like the view has opened up a bit on the north boundary...

 Possibly 70% of our mature trees uprooted or snapped off...

 ...some of them not so small either...

 ...we calculate over 52 years of playground sentry duty!

 The loss of EVERYONE'S FAVOURITE climbing tree is going to be a bit hard to take when school arrives back after the Easter break!

 Just as well we are embracing Autumn, and we have time to find some new shade sails...

 ...and pole!

 Literarily ripped to shreds!

If only these were Phohutukawa stamens...

 Just as well we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon in December last year, collecting self sown native seedlings from our front Gardens!

A HUGE Thank you to Natasha our Community DOC Ranger for spending the afternoon with us potting up our finds...we'll need you back this term!

We have a bit of work ahead of us, we'll have all the mulch we need to mulch the Mother Earth Orchard and re-plant the northern boundary with natives!

Twilight Gala Seed Bombs

 After seeing how popular the "Sensational Seed" activity was last week in the garden ...we decided to carry on with more seeds this week!

 Seeing how much our Garden Warriors enjoyed making up sachets of seeds to take home we decided to get some seeds ready for a "Make your own Seed Bomb" activity at our Twilight Gala this Friday (that's tomorrow)...

 More sunflowers were harvested and prepared for the "Sunny Sunflower Mix"...

 Sieves were out rattling out every last poppy seed for our "Perky Poppy Mix"...

 More sieve shaking was required for the "Glamorous Natives: Ringaringa Lillies"...

And the hammers were out for our "Salad enhancing Mix" of coriander, radish, parsley and calendula! All that's left is to make up our special clay bombs tomorrow at lunch time!

Should be a fun evening Garden Warriors...see you there!

Sensational Seeds!

With the last weeks of summer upon us we have been very busy in the School Garden harvesting "Sensational Seeds"...

Our Garden Warriors have enjoyed collecting seeds from our coriander, parsley, calendula, radishes, poppies and sunflowers...

...we have been looking at the amazing engineering that Mother Nature has designed to disperse all the different types of seeds! Some seeds shake out of their little rattles on the breeze, some are heavy enough to just fall down, some attract birds to eat them and take them further a field, and some pop open with such force they "ping" all around, and some come with their own little parachute system to ride the wind to far off lands!

A wonderfully busy time was had carefully selecting seeds to put into creatively decorated envelopes to take home. It was great hearing at yesterdays garden session about how a lot of these seeds have already been planted!

Last week we were all amazed to find quite a few Garden Warriors Featuring in Aprils edition of "NZ Gardener" ...and that McGregor's had a wonderful garden pack of essential Garden goodies heading our way! THANK YOU "NZ Gardener" & Mc Gregor's, you know we will put these to good use!

Our "NZ Gardener" article will no doubt be on the main foyer notice board in pride of place.
The Good news is that Whetu Te Weka has been cohabiting reasonably well in the garden of late...although we must say he has thoroughly destroyed the pea straw bales hunting out tasty critters!

While we do try and have a different activity every week in the garden, our Garden Warriors still just like to wander around just enjoying the garden environment, and taking turns at watering...

...tasting & smelling what is growing...

...but most of all they really like to take a bit of colour home with them!

Another fun afternoon hanging out with a cool bunch of kids...always a privilege!