CONGRATS ON SHAD!!!

I know this isn't about my CAS, but i just wanted to congratulate Emily, Victoria and Adrian on getting into Shad Valley. I'm so proud of you guys <3. Aid is going to Laval, Em to U of S and Tori to U of C. Congrats you guys i believe in you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_70V7AWvc

An Actual Update: The Lobby Garden and Greenhouse

Yes. I know. Lately my posts have become shorter and shorter an honestly, pretty bad. I guess i just hit that wall. However, I've just scraped myself off that wall and i'm about to become the worlds best CAS blogger. Well, maybe. So, anyway, the garden project has had its ups and downs, but i think everything is on its way to be being great. The tree looks so much better (it's growing new leaves!) and everything is clean (no garbage, or at least very little!) and soon we should be able to try and fix up the water damaged and to be frank somewhat dangerous wall (the paint chips stick out and scrape you has you walk by). Also, some other people taking part in the project decided to put a bucket filled with water in it, and people have started to throw money into it, which is far better than the garbage they used to. However, i'm not totally sure what we're going to do with the money because i honestly doubt we're going to make enough to buy more than a couple packets of seeds. Maybe we can donate it to some charity, like put a little (waterproof) sign up that says "all will be donated to <insert charity here>". It would probably count for extra service. We could choose a charity that our school participates in too (like Easter Seals or something) and then just put our part in, but with things like these it means we have a time limit and i don't know if we'd make more than a couple dollars. So, we could always choose our own charity an just donate it to them in June. I'm not sure, i'll bring it up with the group sometime next week. Here are some before and after pictures of the garden just to show the improvement.

Also, Adrian dug up one of the plants that was barely surviving in the garden and transplanted it to the greenhouse where hopefully we can bring back to life. The greenhouse has become one of my favourite places; it's just so relaxing and warm and bright and despite it being a structure completely made out of windows you never feel like you're being judged because you're just there with your friends and nobody else cares. However, the greenhouse has its own problems. For example, there are about 8 (?) leaks in the ceiling and with all the rain and melting snow it's almost constantly dripping. It rips onto the tables and rots the untreated wood, plus it makes the floor slippery and muddy (which forces us to clean it EVERY day) and the drips follow some of the metal and almost a 90 degree angle and rusts it and then it drips on to the treated wood which is getting damaged despite being treated. To deal with this problem we put a whole bunch of buckets to catch the water which we then use to water the plants, however there is so much water that the buckets tend to overflow. We're trying not to waste perfectly good water, but honestly the greenhouse needs to be fixed. Apparently, it's unable to be fixed, but it's likely just too expensive or difficult. Along with the water problem, since there's no botany class this year the school has piled chairs and desks in it as extra storage and it's somewhat difficult to move around in if there's more than like 3 people. Now, on a better note we've gone planting crazy, which you can likely tell by the video i just posted. I have only had a chance to plant some black eyed Susans that i named Wanda, however everyone else planted  geraniums, some basil, zinnias, snow peas, hot peppers, normal peppers, thyme, coriander and fenugreek. Plus, Adrian brought in a pineapple plant and lets just say i really want a pineapple. Anyway, i'm hoping to plant some forget me nots, some mint and maybe some stevia!

A Video: Lobby Garden Project

Wow, my art is just so gr8.

So, i've been doing this CAS art thing and basically we're learning about how to do acrylics. So, here is one of my first attempts at an actual acrylic painting and just keep in mind that i only had like 15-20 minutes to paint this. Our goal was to use some sort of colour scheme like all primary colours or all complimentary colours. I chose to do all warm colours. Please don't hate, I tried.

Sorry, my webcam sucks. 

Harini the Crassula Ovata

The Crassula Ovata; a house plant commonly known as a jade plant.
Harini: a friend commonly known as Harini.
Harini the Crassula Ovata: A jade plant we are taking care of because our school decided it was not a huge priority and let it pretty much die.
Yes, i know it sounds a little morbid that we named a dying jade plant after our friend, but we only hope it will follow in the footsteps of our namesake and become a strong independent woman who likes physics and for some reason tolerates us. The plant is in pretty bad shape though, the leaves that should be glossy are shriveled and if you shake it little branches just break off. We water it almost everyday and whenever it gets big and strong we're going to plant it!!! I'm really excited  also soon we will hopefully start planting things in the greenhouse and i am going to plant my favourite flowers: forget me nots :) They're so pretty and underrated and wayyyyyyy better than roses, just saying. Anyway, here are some pictures of both the Harini's and us water Harini (the plant).


Also, the fig tree in the lobby is growing new leaves! I'm so proud of her. I'm feeling very maternal towards Kim, she's basically my daughter,except instead of the kids growing up and graduating and leaving it'll be me who's doing the leaving in two years!

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” ~Dr.Suess

At my school we have an interesting addition to the lobby; an indoor garden. However, it's in awful shape and treated like a waste bin. It's only been watered once since like September and because of this there is only one tree that is actually somewhat surviving and the others literally have maybe 6 leaves on them. When people walk by the throw their apple cores and gum wrappers and pennies into the garden. So, after being approached by our amazing chemistry teacher to help her save the garden about 6 or 7 of us got together last Friday to water the trees. It was really awful how bad of shape everything was in. There were huge amounts of garbage, dead leaves everywhere, a rotting plant (possibly a hosta) and a poor sagging cactus. We cleaned up all garbage, raked up the dead leaves, pruned the trees and then gave the whole garden a nice long drink of badly needed water. After we finished everything looked so much healthier and greener, I can't wait to see how well it will look after we start to water it on a weekly basis! We are hopping that this can be our big CAS project as we are full of ideas of how to make the garden less of an eyesore and more of a focal point in the lobby. After the plants already living in there start to live again, we are hoping to plant some flowers and maybe put some decorative rocks to really liven it up. Plus, the walls surrounding it need some serious TLC and we were thinking we could sand it, plaster it, prime it and then get some art students involved to paint a mural on it! There's just so much we can do with this project, not only will it increase school involvement, save some trees, improve the schools air quality, teach us some responsibility because we are now in charge of the plants' lives and give us some gardening experience, but hopefully it will inspire others to take a stand and save our plant life! I'm really excited about this project, because apparently there have been no botany classes this year at all and i find that really sad, so maybe this will get people pumped for botany next year. Here are some pictures of the garden after we finished watering it.

These are after watering and they still look kind of pitiful.