Squash Blossoms

Hey there! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! I just launched a kickstarter project and you should check it out. I was asked to paint a mural at an elementary school, but we need funding to make it happen. It’s going to be all about the native plants and animals that live in the Bay Area, how awesome is that?! There will be info written next to the plants, like the latin and common name, and if you can eat it or if you’d be better off making soap or a brush out of it. It’s a great opportunity for me to paint something beautiful for these kids, and I need as much help as I can get.

Just click the link below, and you get to watch an embarrassing video of me talking about it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/894166155/native-plants-are-tasty-too-a-mural-at-emerson-ele?ref=email

And of course, please spread the word! Thanks everyone.

A friend told me a story a while back that keeps running through my mind about working at a garden program at a school. They had planted some veggies in the garden, and the carrots were ready to be harvested. They brought all the kids over to the garden and then pulled the carrots up out of the ground. The kids all freaked. They had no idea that carrots grew in the dirt! They thought carrots came out of the store, perfectly orange and with no sign of dirt, and that was that. There was no processing facility, no farmer, and especially no soil. It really doesn’t help that most kids are taught that dirt, and being dirty, is bad for you. Dirt bad + carrots in dirt = carrots bad. Hmmmm… maybe not the best way to think of our food and where it comes from.

When I was little I loved playing in the mud and finding worms and rolly-polly bugs in the garden. It was the best. Dirt was far from an enemy. And I still love that dirt and those worms, and so do all the delicious veggies that are presented to us so immaculately in the store. Not understanding how our food grows isn’t the only down side to all of this, it’s also not understanding who does the growing. Knowing that your delicious tomatoes come from a farm, worked and run by people and didn’t just magically appear, could help give people more appreciation for everything they consume.

This is one reason I’m excited about trying to get this mural project going. It’s kind of a starting point in showing kids how plants grow, where they really come from, and of course how darned pretty it all is.

I’ve been asked to paint a mural! Who woulda thunk. It’s going to be in the hallway at Emerson Elementary School in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland. It’s going to be about East Bay native plants and animals. I’ve got to make sure to include some of my childhood favorites like, Sticky monkey flowers, whose leaves you can stick to your nose, and miner’s lettuce that grows wild everywhere in the Oakland hills, and makes a numy snack. And I’ve gotta have some bugs and little slithery newts!

Only problem is the school doesn’t have funding for it… a small hitch. We’ll figure something out. I’m gonna give Kickstarter a try, and see where that goes. And of course I’ll post as soon as I have a project up!

Wahoo! Art and plants and bugs, ohmy!