School’s out!  A moment celebrated every year by the “waving to the busses” pulling out for the last time until mid-August.

And so, things were also finishing up in the garden, kinda.

I did a bunch of make-up garden lessons (on peas!  surprise!) and came to love the book “First Peas to the Table” by Susan Grigsby about Thomas Jefferson’s annual contest with his neighbors.

We did a lot of mulberry eating.

My senior ambassadors worked on a mosaic stepping stone that will stay in the garden, acknowledging their two years of service.

On the second day of summer, we held our (belated) annual tea party for Administrative Professionals day.  I tried to organize it on the actual holiday in May, or thereabouts, but discovered that stealing away all seven of our administrative staff at the same time might  inadventently make the school crumble in on itself.  These wonderful people make it happen every day, and I love that we’re on our fourth year of celebrating them in the garden.

The new PLUS team (junior high leadership) also came out for a 2-hour service project during the first week of summer, helping to spread woodchips, deadhead herbs and flowers, tear out peas, put in tomatoes and squash, mulch, tidy up the breast cancer awareness ribbon garden, and water.

This is what the ribbon looks like when the daffodil and tulips are out of season. It needs a lot of tidying to keep the shape and outline, made with red bark and white stones.

Ta-dah! What were peas are now tomatoes, the Harvest of the Month for August and September.

And finally, I set up the summer watering schedule for our volunteer families, made exactly 100% easier this year by the fact that my friend and fellow Master Gardener put in timed irrigation to ALL of our edibles.  Now we just have to water the ornamentals a couple times a week with rainwater.  Thank you dear Mary!