Gardening

Food Drive: Results

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, but my experiences in CAS have anything but ceased. The last thing i posted about was the food drive that Josh (one of the grade 12's was planning) so this post is going to focus around that event. I had pretty high hopes about this food drive because i felt that we were prepared for it. Pat and I had made a poster and were told that it had been passed out, so walking up to the first house i felt assured that everyone knew about it. The last food drive i participated in ran into some problems because people didn't know about it. So, i had hoped to avoid any awkward conversations about not knowing it was going on by having the whole neighborhood aware of the food drive. Alas, this did not work as well as i had hoped. I had been in charge of making up the poster and not passing it out, so it seems that some people were left out of the know. This is one thing that i would improve upon if i were to ever organize or help out with another food drive because not only did it possibly hinder the amount of food that could've been collected and taken to the food back, but it also out extra pressure on the volunteers collecting the food. There is one thing that i do not pride myself on and that is responding to questions that don't really have an answer, but seem to require one and during this food drive i was put in the position a lot. Each time i went up to a house who hadn't heard about the food drive and therefore had to either go find some food or tell us they didn't have anything i heard the same comment over and over again. This comment was "i didn't know there was a food drive going on" and i was never sure what exactly i should say. Should i apologize that it wasn't better publicized or should i just give a sympathetic glance? I was always unsure of this, but by the end of the night i could field these awkward encounters like a pro and i really felt a boost in my confidence. When we were collecting the food the implications of a food drive really hit me. It just occurred to me as i was waiting on the doorstep of someone's house that this person who i had literally met seconds ago was going into their own cupboard, basically taking food out of their own family's mouth, to give to less fortunate people of whom they had never met. It was really quite amazing to see the goodness in people and this experience really opened my eyes. At the end of the night we convened and put together all the food we had collected and this was how much we ended up collecting

Food Drive

On the 24th I, along with a couple of other classmates, are going to be collecting food bank donations door to door. Already, Patrick and I have made a poster for the food drive and we may possibly be going to help hang them up. Hopefully, this experience will be enlightening to the needs of those who go hungry in our town.

Retraction

So, i previously stated that i am a plant expert. However, this is not the case. So, i would like to do a retraction and clarify that i am not a plant expert, but merely a plant enthusiast. The reason why i am retracting the aforementioned comment is because i over watered a few of my plants and therefore can not be considered one. In other news my forget-me-nots came up!!!!

Jessica: Plant Expert

So, over the long weekend instead of studying i decided to make up a plant book with all the info we need about the plants we are and will be taking care of. I completely filled out the first 8 pages which are my own plants and then i left the rest blank (with just a page title) so that the others can fill out some pages too! This way we can keep straight how often the plants need to be watered or pruned and when they're supposed to sprout etc. I think this will be a great way to not only record our progress throughout CAS, but also a way to record what we've learned about each plant and what works better which we can either keep for the rest of our lives or pass on to the next generation of IB growers. Here are a few pictures of it. Please ignore the bad lighting, poor quality and the creepy face i'm making.

Also, my mom gave me a pinot gris grape vine and i love it. Here's a picture

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

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. 

Yearbook and Battle of the Books

The yearbook meetings seem to be coming less and less frequently, and even when they do happen they're short. I'm hoping it will pick up the pace a bit, but i guess there's really not a lot to do right now. However, we have started page editing and I've realized i'm really self conscious about my editing skills without a theme.When you have a theme, everyone has to kinda follow the basic rules. No, not every page has to look the same, but every page needs to portray the same kind of atmosphere. So, without a theme everyone is left to their own devices and with he makeup of our group i'm worried. Our committee is compromised of two types of people; the creative, fun and more colorful side and the boring, stuck in their ways and lovers of the color beige. With this combination, i think it's inevitable that some people are gonna want to do their pages with cartoon-y shapes and fun colors and others are going to be like "white, red, the end". So, pretty much i don't think the committee is on the same page and even though i'm one of the organizer leader people i don't feel i have enough power to set us on the same page without looking like a whiny little girl. I think the only person who can is Mr. Toms, but it doesn't look like he's going to any time soon. But, yeah, as i was saying with the page designing i'm feeling kind of self conscious because my page has snowflakes all over it and i'm worried it's going to be too juvenile. Many of the people involved in yearbook are grade twelves and i just have a feeling that they're not going to be impressed with my cute little snowflakes. Well, you never know; maybe this week everything will just work out.

Battle of the Books is a new CAS activity of mine. It's being put on by some students in the grade 12 class and basically you get a team of two or three and choose a book and then debate with the other teams. I think this should be a really great and fun experience, plus it's in support of the Literacy Association. I'm not sure what book we're choosing, but the theme of the debate is What book will be likely to become a classic in 100 years.

CAS: A Reflection

Here's a reflection on my CAS progress so far that I have to pass into my CAS supervisor.

The CAS component of IB has been quite an experience and not one I had entirely expected to be so impactful and beneficial. Many of the activities I have participated in are in different subjects and areas that I wasn't familiar with or hadn't considered "my kind of activity". CAS has forced me to push past my boundaries, try things I never would have tried otherwise and push me towards being a well-rounded person.  Since October I have become a writer in the book section of the school newspaper, participated in a worldwide scavenger hunt called GISHWHES, jump-started the yearbook and became co-organizer of the yearbook committee, joined my first dodge ball team and started to take yoga classes.

School Newspaper

I joined the school newspaper "The Rural Reader" as a writer in the book section this past October and since then have written four articles. By doing this activity I had hoped to improve my general writing and organization/deadline skills, to develop journalistic writing skills and to really make a commitment every to the project and attempt to have an article in every issue. I believe that I have accomplished most of these objectives. When looking back on my first articles compared to the most recent it's obvious that my writing skills in general have definitely improved and I've become more comfortable writing short, concise articles. However, along with general writing skills I've developed new journalistic writing skills pertaining especially to writing articles. Writing book reviews is an art that requires a certain language, a certain comprehension of the book and an open mind. Over the past few months I've managed to develop these skills that book reviews require. Despite my growth in the writing area of being a part of the newspaper, my organization and deadline skills have been lacking. I've only missed the deadline once and it was ironically the only time I finished my article well in advance, but I forgot to send it in. Every other time I manage to forget about until the day before or the night that it's due and I end up scrambling to finish it at a decent hour. Even though I've managed to finish the articles in time I need to work on not procrastinating and learning to be a bit more organized. To do this I plan to start using an agenda again and try and stay on top of things. Ultimately I have learned from this experience that being part of a newspaper take time, commitment, creativity and an open mind. Furthermore, I look forward to accomplishing my organization objective and writing my next article.

GISHWHES

During a week in the month of October I, along with the majority of my classmates, participated in the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. The idea is that you register and make a team or get put on a random team (with the proceeds going to a charity) and for one week a list of 100-200 items will be posted on the GISHWHES website. Then, you and your team will have to take a picture or video of whatever is indicated by the item. Each item is worth a certain amount of points depending on difficulty and points will be given for accuracy and presentation creativity of the item. The team with the most points win.  Many of these items were extremely bizarre and problem solving skills were needed to figure out if and how we could complete these items. Teamwork was extremely important in the scavenger hunt also; we had to get together and plan who would do what item and there were group items that we completed. The group items demanded that every member be part of the item and it took some real organization to pull it off. All in all, this activity forced my creativity and problem solving skills to improve.

Yearbook

I've always been interested in yearbook and was part of the committee in junior high. So, when I went to the first yearbook meeting in high school I was immensely disappointed by the lack of creativity I found. We were told that if we wanted to take pictures for the yearbook we weren't allowed to mess around with format or colours and pictures were basically the only thing we could do. My friend and I both left at this point. The best part of yearbook was taking the pictures and making a page to display them and neither of us wanted to be a part of something so restricting. So, this year after having a conversation with our CAS coordinator, my friend and I decided to take over, plan and initiate the yearbook. A proposal was written and sent to the school principal and soon enough we had taken over the yearbook with the help from twp other teachers in the school. Since we started much later in the year than we should have our main objective was to get pictures of things that we missed and the things we were going to miss if we didn't get a move on. Within a few weeks I had already gone to take my first pictures for the yearbook and, despite the cold, it felt great to be taking yearbook pictures. Not too long after this the committee had its first meeting and I was greatly surprised and slightly disappointed. When my friend and I proposed to take over the yearbook we had hoped to put some creativity into, but there were people in the committee who opted against most changes. I had originally and naively thought that everybody would want a cool cover and unique pages and that the only reason it was so boring last year was because there was little student involvement. My perspective has changed however, I now realize that there are many different viewpoints and that it's their yearbook too and they should have a say. I believe that since starting this I've started to have a more open mind and become less selfish and self serving, not just in yearbook, but in the rest of my life too. I hope that I will continue improving in this way for the rest of the year. Right now in yearbook we have members who are taking pictures of various events happening around the school and we just had our first session working on format. All is running smoothly and I hope this will continue for the remainder of the year.  

Dodge Ball

Every year a dodge ball tournament is held and up until now I never had any interest in it whatsoever. It seemed to me that it was mainly just a group of athletic kids hitting each other with balls. However, in hindsight perhaps it was just that I didn't have a team that prevented me from considering this as an activity for me. This year when the tournament came up an IB team was proposed and I jumped on the idea. I'm not a very athletic person, but isn't that a good reason to join a team? I had hoped that not only would I be able to bond with my classmates, get some exercise and have fun, but that I would be able to integrate into the rest of the school. All the IB kids and I have the same classes' everyday with all the same people and our breaks, other than lunch, aren't the same. So, there is little chance to really make new friends or even feel like you're a part of the school. After the tournament I definitely feel closer to the rest of the school and less like there's a difference between the IB kids and everybody else.

Yoga

Yoga is my newest activity and I have only been to three classes so far. I've never tried yoga as I'm not particularly flexible nor am I usually comfortable doing exercises in a large class. AT first I was little wary of it, but after my first class I fell in love. I had assumed I would spend the whole class being self conscious or worrying, but I realized that everybody else was so focused on their own breathing and concentration that I was barely even there. Aside from stretching and sweating, yoga is a great way to de-stress and there is a huge push to focus on breathing. How long, how loud and how deep you breathe is all very important in the classes. In my first class there were certain poses in the standing series that I was unable to do because I had no balance and couldn't stay on one foot for long enough. By my third class I'm still a bit unsteady, but I'm now able do every pose in the standing series without falling over. I hope that I will be able to further improve my balance and flexibility through this class and that the calmness and lack of self consciousness I feel in the classes will spread to my everyday life.

Catching Up

I seem to have forgotten about my CAS blog, but not about CAS! So, here's what's been happening lately. Yearbook: I took some pictures on the last day of school before Christmas break and we're starting the cover contest. Not a lot has happened to be honest. Although, I think I'm getting a little bit better with the group; before now each meeting annoyed me because a lot of the people were hard to get along with and just stuck in the past. However, with some optimism from my amigos Emily and Adrian yearbook seems brighter. I just really hope we can get a move on the fun stuff like page design. Dodgeball: it's been officially over for awhile and we didn't even come close to winning, but it was fun being on a real team and part of a school event for once. Buddy Program: I went the first two days, but haven't been able to go since because it interferes with yearbook. On the first day it was really just logistics and such, but on the second day we actually got to do things. However, my buddy is confined to a wheel chair and is unable to speak so it was difficult to really do anything. We ended up just going to the gym and watching dodgeball. Newspaper: since my first article I've written three other articles. One was just a list of some of the top books named by an organization. another was a review on an anthology I read. This article was probably my best so far because for once I didn't procrastinate and I actually like what I was reading. In fact, when I wrote the anthology review I went way over the word limit and had to cut some stuff out. Also, yesterday I wrote a movie to book review on Les Mis which I unfortunately left to the very last minute again. I really have to work on that. Yoga: So, last Tuesday I went to my first yoga class! I've decided to take up yoga for multiple reasons; IB is stressing me out and I need some relaxation, I have no balance and little flexibility, it's way too cold in Canada (it's hot yoga) and of course I really need some action for CAS of course! One Tuesday I went with Mallory, Sawini and Cassy and yesterday I went with Mallory and Sarah. I enjoyed last nights class far more than the Tuesday class. I think it was because on Tuesday I was nervous about starting something new and I was struggling to keep up or maybe because I grabbed the wrong leggings to wear and ended up wearing ones with a rip in them. Yesterdays class was just so much calmer. It was earlier in the afternoon so it was bright outside and I honestly thought it felt more naturel. Since there was a lot of natural light coming in, it honestly felt like a summers day and not an unnaturally warm night. I was also able to keep up better in the class and actually do the stretches so it seemed to be a lot more beneficial for me. A few things I really love about yoga that I hadn't expected was how relaxing it really is and how non-judgemental it is. Usually in classes, on teams or in gym class I feel really self conscious that I'm not doing it right or not keeping up and that everybody is starring at me. However, in yoga it's really a solitary thing; you focus on what you've done and how well you've done it and it doesn't matter if anyone else is there. In yoga I'm able to let go off all my uncertainties and just live. I hope I will be able to keep improving and hopefully make yoga part of my daily life. That's all for now.... I think!

Yearbook: Not Exactly What We'd Planned?

In the past few weeks much has happened with the yearbook. We applied an earlier published date (so everyone can get their book at the end of the year instead of the fall after), we've taken pictures at events (artsy and sporty alike) and we've formed a committee. However, it's been less than stellar sailing. We were denied and earlier published date, some of the pictures I took were pretty awful and our committee isn't exactly easy to get along with. When Emily and I started the yearbook we had been told that we'd be running the show; that we were the leaders, but it seems like what Mr. Toms says goes. I can deal with that, but it's just that the grade 12's on our committee think that they get priority because of seniority and at least half the committee wants to keep this book bland and boring. Everyone seems to be against us and (sorry Emily) but in some ways i'm almost regretting being part of it. Don't get me wrong; i love photography and page design, but it honestly doesn't sound like it's going to be much fun if everybody fights you on your decisions. That's also one of the reasons i really wanted to do the IB yearbook; because our class doesn't care if 10 years later our cover has a picture of a weesnaw on it, or if our pages have insane designs or extremely weird awkward quotes.  Hopefully it'll get better as things get organized.  Who knows, maybe this book will be the best yet!

Buddy Program

The Buddy Program is a program where once a lunch each week for half an hour one of the kids with disabilities at our school will hang out with us. Maybe we'll go to the library, chill in the cafeteria or walk around school. I think this program will really make an impact; at the moment these kids sit at their own table and are rarely integrated. I hope that by the end the kids we're being buddied with will fell more included and involved. Tomorrow is the first day. Let's hope it all goes well!