Take a garden full to overflowing with beautiful flowers, and add some energetic kids, parents, teachers, then mix with recycled phone books and some scissors and what do you have?
Good Shepherd's first Flower Pressing Party!
On Thursday, July 22, I was joined in the garden by the Kaufmann family, Victoria, Noah, Sonja and Johann, to learn how to collect and press flowers. Sonja started cutting Cosmos, daisies and poppies for her collection. Don't they make a beautiful bouquet?
Victoria and Noah were busy with their own collections of Bachelor Buttons, California Poppies and a variety of other flowers.
After they cut their flowers, they placed them carefully between the pages of an old phone book for pressing. Their are lots of different ways to press flowers, but I've found the good, old-fashioned phone book the easiest and cheapest. Maybe we can learn to make plant presses during school this year.
We left about 100 pages between flower samples, and we'll have to check them every week or so and move them to a dry page to prevent molding. I made the mistake of using acid free paper covered with wax paper, and my flowers molded (Off to the compost bin with you!).
Noah had his own personal style to pressing flowers! But I suggest you add a couple of large books, some bricks or paving stones. It would be hard to sit on your flowers for several weeks until they dry!
When the flowers are dry, they can use them to decorate notecards, picture frames or make their own original artwork. Don't worry, there are lots of flowers left, so I'm sure we'll be able to do some more flower pressing when school starts.
We had to wait a while for the flowers to dry, so I started collecting see pods. We can use them to plant more flowers next yeaI'm new to this, so I'm doing a little 
experiment. I took one set of seed pods and placed them in a box on a paper towell. I took another set and just put them together in a small paper bag. I'll keep an eye on them to see how they dry and if either process is better at preventing mold. The bag method is easier and we could get a lot more seed pods in less time, but if the box method has less mold, it will be worth the time and effort. I'll let you know how it goes
We also harvested some of the vegetables that were ready. Look at the size of this potato! Should we eat it, or save it for seed for next year? Hmmmm? Let me know what you think I should do.
Johan really got into picking the Pre-School zucchini. We all enjoyed the zucchini bread I made from another one I picked yesterday. I had three different types, one with raisins (my personal favorite), one with walnuts, and one with chocolate chips (the kid's favorite).
Here's the recipe if anyone is interested. Let me know if you have your own favorite garden recipes.
Zucchini Bread (by Yvonne Bailey)
3 eggs 1 cup cooking oil
2 cups sugar 2 cups zucchini, grated
1 tablesppon vanilla 3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder 1 tablesppon cinnamon
1 cup nuts, chopped and/or chocolate chips or raisins
Beat eggs until light. Add oil, sugar, vanilla and zucchini. Mix lightly but well. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and baking powder, then add to the eggs and zucchini and mix until blended. Add nuts, chocolate chips or raisins and stir again. Pour into two greased 9 x 5 x 2 bread pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until bread tests done (an inserted toothpick out clean). This recipe freezes well, so you can use up all that zucchini and enjoy it the rest of the year.
Miss Sue and Johann agree,"We love our school garden!"
Stay tuned for more special events. And as always, you'll find me in the garden!
Ms. G.
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