Ok, enough about food.

I'm sure that those of you who read our blog are a bit tired of all the market basket posts...sorry about that. I guess I just really enjoy taking a picture of it every week and tel you about the new things I learn how to cook, BUT we need to make sure that there are other things being written about.

It's now November which means we have lived in Milwaukee for just about two and a half months (wow - it feels a lot longer than that). Jeremy is up to his ears in school work and I am learning new things everyday at my job.

Yesterday I worked painting our logo on the side of our building, which made me really happy. I feel that the management staff at Growing Power have a good sense of what people are good at and how they can use those talents to enhance the organization. There are so many unbelievably talented and passionate people working there.

After painting I went to the Urban Ecology Center: Washington Park. Our first week in Milwaukee Jeremy and I rode over there and signed up to be volunteers. Jeremy has been going to the Urban Ecology: Riverside Park every Friday and being a volunteer teacher. This was my first time back to volunteer and I'm really glad I did. It took me back to the root of what I love to do, which is to learn about our natural environment and teach others about it. Every Saturday before the young scientists club starts the staff feeds the animals with the kids (and parents) that come. They have turtles (box, painted, musk, mud), fish (yellow perch, blue gills), an american toad and bull frog, and two different snake (which I can't remember their types). One for the moms next to me verbally expressed her love for turtles, which turned into a conversation about why water and land turtles are shaped different, but also the similarities that all turtles have, and the variety of things different turtles will eat in the wild. Then I answered other questions about snakes. It was so fun!

After watching the animals be fed by the staff, kids and volunteers went into the park and picked up litter. It was so fun watching the them really get into cleaning up the park, but also having teachable moments at the same time. The little girl I was partnered with kept picking up fallen tomatoes when we were cleaning up around the raised beds, but after a few minutes and getting asked where tomatoes come from she figured out that tomatoes on the ground were not trash, but would turn back into soil and we should put them in the compost pile, not our black trash bag.

Then just when I thought the day couldn't get any better the staff took the kids to the rain garden to collect seeds to be planted next spring. After being taught which seeds to collect we split into groups. Never in my life would I have thought that we would collect seeds for 20+ minutes and have kids be so into it that they didn't want to go home! My group collected bergamot, which is a type of mint which is used in making earl grey tea. The stem of the plant is square rather then circular, which is characteristic of mints, and the seeds a found in tiny little tubes which were once the flower. Cool huh?