Simple Contentment

11 April 2013Jim Ganley

Last Sunday afternoon BEAT members put their shoulders to the wheel in the school vegetable garden.

Armed with a shovel and a damp cardboard box of potato sprouts, we began work at high noon. Excavating small holes (careful to avoid any earthworms) we placed potatoes at their center and lightly covered them with soil. Then, in between these mounds of earth, onion bulbs were plunged deep into the ground.

Next, we raked wheelbarrows of earth between several exposed raspberry roots and tied their long swaying stalks to metal frames, intermittently clipping back any decaying foliage.

Soon we had completed our task and all that was left to do was admire the progress the garden had made over Spring Break. In one corner the snap peas we had planted were already showing their bright little heart-shaped leaves of hope and in another the rhubarb ruby red stems were glowing beneath a petticoat of thick ruddy leaves.

After an hour and a half of sweating, shoveling and raking, we were left with the simple contentment of having done something significant and good, however small.

Pascale B, Mackenzie ‘14

Where Students Choose To Be