Kids Gardening Day at the Sumner

By Celines Rodriguez

GreeningRozzie organized a “Kids Gardening Day” with the Afterschool K1 and K2 kids program of the Charles Sumner School on April 30, 2013. What a wonderful experience to teach our kids the importance of plants, flowers and trees in our community!

We planted marigold seeds and some green bean seeds in milk carton containers. These milk cartons were recycled from the kid’s daily breakfast and/or lunches. That brought us to the topic of recycling and how we can help the Earth by recycling at home.

These are just a few of the comments that the kids shared with me after our gardening day:

“Flowers need oxygen and water to grow”
“The environment needs more flowers to make it pretty and a happy place”
“Plants and trees help the earth”
“If we recycle we can save the world”
“We save money if we recycle because we use things over and over and over”
“If we don’t recycle the earth will “suck-up” the stuff we leave behind and that is not good for the earth”
“Flowers need love”
Many of them expressed their interest in gardening again in the future.

One of the things that I told the kids was that we have to love our seeds in order for them to grow, so one of the kids suggested we should sing to our seeds so they can sprout to become beautiful flowers.

As kids they see that we love them, sing to them, feed them, nourish them and so this is what they want to do to help our seeds grow. What they see from us as parents is what they will do later on, so if we take care of the environment and our community now, they will follow our example and make it a better one in the future.

Global Village Construction Set

Check out the Global Village Construction Set. It’s a do-it-yourselfer’s guide to building 50 industrial machines, including a tractor, well-drilling rig, plasma cutter, wind turbine and 3D printer. It’s a great resource for those building self-sufficient, sustainable communities.
- Eric Smalley

Roslindale out in force for Boston Shines

By Jeremy Bingham

On Saturday, April 27th people from across the Roslindale community and beyond gathered to support people of the community surrounding Healy Field in cleaning their streets and planting sunflowers.

As part of the days’ events, GreeningRozzie gave away around 300 sunflower seeds donated by Allandale Farm to people from the community and other participants. Each sunflower sequesters roughly 6 g of carbon dioxide. So if all the seeds are planted and grow into sunflowers that adds up to 1.8 kg!

Participants included monks, neighbours, students, city officials and local development groups. The event was organised through the combined efforts of the city, Casserly House, Habitat for Humanity, Councilman Rob Consalvo's office, Temple Viet Nam, and GreeningRozzie.  It was wonderful to see such a broad and enthusiastic group get together and work to improve the place we live. It speaks to the unique spirit of Roslindale, where the diversity of our population breeds a strong sense of cohesion instead of confrontation.

It felt so uplifting to walk the streets on Saturday and see folks from all walks of life taking the time to take care of our shared spaces and community, getting their hands dirty to keep Roslindale shining.

In the wake of the horrific events two weeks ago the mantra of the greater Boston area has been "Boston Strong", and it is these kind of collective community efforts that foster this strength.  It is events like the cleanup on Saturday that reinforce that it is far more than tragedy that bring the people of Boston together to support one another.