Hortis, Come to Culturing and Graduation, Too.

Today's Wednesday. The folks at Blessington decided to retry our graduation ceremony. It was largely for our two GED students who graduated to receive their GEDs, but the staff decided to just do a whole thing for other classes that have graduates. That means I got to walk across and be congratulated, too, because I completed my Tech Support Services vocation.

Horticulture was sad, because they will not get to participate; they had students who completed the program 19 months ago when the last instructor left, but we also had not had a graduation ceremony for programs that were not self-contained since then that I can recall (Faith and Character Based, as so, is a self-contained program that lives in two dorm wings, and runs its own graduations).

Speaking of bringing plants to culture, yesterday (my lack of breakfast aside) was a hoot! I got to actually blend perlite and peat moss into my soil, loosening it up critically. It was still showing signs of compaction before I did that, and both the instructor and her teaching assistants witnessed how much work I had been putting into turning and aerating the soil, breaking up chunks of it by hand and with tools. They also noted my attempt to start my own personal compost pile, asking me about it. My requests for sand were upgraded to this as result of me having a grasp of what I needed, and working to obtain it, it seems! :)

Perlite is such a strange thing to me. It honestly looks like someone took some Styrofoam pellets and threw it into soil, saying "haha, have fun, chump! You'll never get rid of this!" It took me back to when I was much, much younger and saw the stuff in plants. I can't tell when this was, but I remember my dad was in this memory; we had gone to one of the local nurseries and bought some plants. He removed the plastic container, which had soil and what I thought was Styrofoam at the time.
"Dad," I asked, "why they got packing peanuts in the dirt?"
I don't recall what the old man said, but he removed as much of the soil as he could (which is a no-no: that shocks the plant), transplanting it without the 'packing peanuts' to our garden.

Today was great, with a little misfire.
I made a small mistake: I was given new oregano seeds yesterday to plant, but didn't get them on the ground because of the soil turning. I had them in my only pocket all day. I... threw my shirt into the laundry cart, forgetting to remove that tiny packet of seeds first. I thought about it this morning as I woke up. Crap. :(
But seeing the little leafies on either my cucumbers or my squash having broken through the old, crusty soil turned my day right around! I'll give them some time to go uppies, then I should be able to transplant it to a better spot in the new soil, break up the old crap mound, and watch it go nyoom!
Speaking of leafies, the plants I started in class? Something has sprouted in its tray, too! :D I'm looking forward to sometime next week, where hopefully the rest of my tray has sprouted, and I can plant it all at once.

My mint plants? I need to go move some more to my bed from where it's all alone and unattended. Maybe Thursday.

Now, we have people in class who just don't want to be in the garden, or to get dirty.
I have to ask,

Why did you sign up for a class that is basically gardening??

There are also people who are disagreeing with the instructor (who has, well... a Master's Degree in this field) and the materials, with scientifically proven evidence...
I'm not saying to swallow every drop, but come on, folks, when there is evidence, investigate it if you do not trust it, but form your theory and work your hypothesis through.

I hope the ones who are disruptive influences move on from the class soon. I just want to garden, and work my way through this list so that I can remember that Ilex vomitoria is the Yaupon Holly, Cycas revoluta is the Sago Palm (which is actually not a palm, but a cycad), and Muhlenbergia capillaris is the Purple or Gulf Muhly Grass. Somehow, its Latin name does not contain purpurea, which indicates 'purple'. 'sempervirens' means something is an evergreen...
Yes, we have to learn a LOT of these for the class unit we are in right now. :B

Ah well.

Maybe count will clear soon so we can eat and graduate?