Grow Your Own Magazine

My daughter is 6 and in her second year at school, as we're in Leicestershire our kids break-up for summer today, and its become traditional for the children to take the teachers a thank you gift. Usually they are inundated with flowers, chocolates and toiletries (when I grew-up in Birmingham we used to pelt the teachers cars with flour and eggs last day, but times change!).

So to be different, we make-up her teachers (plural - as its a job-share) a box of veg, she picked the veg last night: First early spuds, carrots, peas, mange tout, onions, beetroot, salad leaves, rhubarb, broad beans and is taking them in today.

We did it last year and it really goes down well!!

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'People don't learn and grow from doing everything right the first time... we only grow by making mistakes and learning from them. It's those who don't acknowledge their mistakes who are bound to repeat them and do no learn and grow. None of us are done making mistakes or overflowing with righteous wisdom. Humility is the key.'
- Thomas Howard

The price of being a skool kid has gone up it used to be a Apple jacob marley

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What lies behind us,And what lies before us,Are tiny matters compared to what lies Within us ...
Ralph Waide Emmerson

what a good idea wish i'd thought of that when DD was at primary school, thank goodness we dont do it at high school

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The love of gardening is a seed once sown never dies ...

Brilliant Idea nice to think of something a bit different

The biggest gift to a teacher ~ is to take your kids away for six weeks!

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

What a brilliant idea! I was just going to send in some potted herbs but I could expand a bit, thank you!

Who wouldn't be chuffed to bits with that? Well done!

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If a man is in the garden and speaks, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated January 3rd - Birdwatching.

Though I have to agree with 2 sheds, the box of veg would be the icing on teh cake. What a fantastic idea!!

Fantastic idea - I've done herb planters before and in the last couple of years I've bought Oxfam gifts (ie: educate a girl, provide school books...) as a joint gift for the teachers/TAs. At Christmas the girls make their own bath bombes and wrap them in an imaginative way or we bake a chocolate cake and they decorate the box it goes in. Bit more thought goes into them than just another box of chocolate!

Veg box next year methinks!

I think that is a lovely idea. When my children were at school we used to take in home-made cakes and biscuits for the teachers. I am a teacher and one family brought me in lamb chops when they had slaughtered a lamb and a pot of home-made mint jelly. A lovely present! A box of veg is a really good idea - much healthy then the chocolates!

Lovely idea, and shows a lot more thought has gone into her gift, any one can pick up a box of chocs or a bunch of flowers at garage on way to the school, much more personal.

Fab idea! I was gonna let the kids take in some of our hens eggs.

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Imagination is everything, it is a preview of what is to become.

As secondary school teachers we don't get presents, except one year when one of my years 7s made me a 'farmyard' of origami animals. It was a lovely gesture, and I still have them tucked away. I found a note in my unlocked desk drawer from one of my autistic children last week, and last year a child with a similar problem wrote her thanks on the whiteboard at the end of the lesson. Very few of the others bother, they are more likely to say 'good riddance'. It's usually the most unlikely year 11's that say thanks, I suffered one boy for 2 years, and managed to 'bully' him into getting a B grade at GCSE. At presentation evening he actually came up and thanked me for the detentions and after school support sessions I made him endure. An amazing change in just a few months!
This year I also had some of my year 13s come to find me to say thanks and goodbye, twisting my arm to be in on results day too. One said I had 'suffered' with them throughout the 2 years (it was the first year of a new qualification and we all had a steep learning curve) and I should be there to celebrate or commiserate at the end!

All the above waffle is trying to tell you all that personal thanks are much appreciated, especially if they come spontaneously.

When mine were at primary school we tried for unusual presents, but a veg box sounds a wonderful idea. I always tried to steer the kids away from tacky ornaments, something edible is appreciated, but doesn't linger (unless, in the case of chocs, on the hips!). Hand made cards and letters are good though.

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I could not live without a garden, it is my place to unwind and recover, to marvel at the power of all growing things, even weeds!

http://potagerplot.blogspot.com/

Middlefield,

Thanks once again for a genius idea. No. 1 son and I were out in the garden at 6.00 this morning harvesting whatever was ready. OH had lifted some new potatoes the night before last and I had already started some herbs off. In the end the boxes (one for the teacher and one for the teaching assistant) contained:

New potatoes
Rhubarb
Peas
Tumbling Tom tomato plant in pot
Baby courgettes
Parsley plant in pot
Sage plant in pot
Thyme plant in pot
Rosemary plant in pot
Marjoram plant in pot
Basil - sweet and dark opal (purple) plants in pots
Tagetes in a pot
Nasturtium plant in pot
Apple, spear and garden mint plants in pot
Little Gem lettuce plant in pot
Strawberries
Raspberries
6 fresh eggs from his grandma's free range organic chooks
Sprigs of honeysuckle and jasmine for decoration

There wasn't a massive amount of any one thing and some of the herbs were young plants. It wasn't completely cost free as I bought the compost, seed and 10 3 inch pots, also there is the labour of all who cultivated, planted and tended the produce. But it would still compare favourably with buying them from a supermarket I think and would still probably work out cheaper. OH thought I was barking but I know if I had received it, especially with rising food prices and the fact that everything was fresh and organic, I would have been really pleased.

Oh and his sister helped him make cards too.

Thanks again,

TGR

Wow! I would have been chuffed to bits to receive that, what a lovely gift!

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Imagination is everything, it is a preview of what is to become.

Veg is a great idea. All the teachers in my school are watching their weight, and dread finding a great big cake in the staffroom ~

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

We're doing the same thing!

It's DD's last day on wednesday, and we'll be giving the head teacher (SO SO lovely) and her class teacher each 6 eggs from the chooks, some home made shortbread, some home-grown courgettes, a couple of home-grown tomatoes if they're ready in time!, and a couple of home-grown banana peppers

Hopefully it'll be more appreciated than the usual chocs and smellies!

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9 chooks, 2 goats, 1 pony, 1 dog, 2 geese, countless wild ducks, a friendly pheasant, 3 veg plots (in the garden), 2 kids, and the OH

Am i mad?

I read this poat the other day and thought it was a great idea. Have just wrapped up a cardboard box with coloured tissue paper and ribbons, and filled it with Potatoes, beetroot, french beans, radishes, courgettes and fresh washed and spun salad!

My daughter has her last day at playschool tomorrow, so I'm sure the playschool ladies will be chuffed with it!

I think that is very thoughtful middlefield.

My kids boxes might include some runnerbeans from the sprouted seed they brought back in about Feb!

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Advertising is the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket. George Orwell
Paul

Don't remember giving our teachers anything when we were at school apart from maybe a card - didn't realise that it was something else which had escalated. Lovely ideas above but I always worry about the poor kids who haven't got parents that make or grow things and that it'll end up getting as competative as the kids party bags which (going on the one my god son brought home the other week) now cost more than the present that was taken!

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Some of us live in the past, always talking about back then. Some of us live in the future, always planning what we are going to do. And, then there are those, who neither look behind or ahead, but just enjoy the moment of right now.

Which one are you and is it how you want to be?