English Goes Edible

Up and down, high and low, Edible English, who would know?

How could Edible and English go together you may wonder? Last April, our English teacher, Mary Ann D'Urso, decided it was time for our literature class to go green. One day we were reading Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, about an urban neighborhood in Cleveland which transformed a vacant garbage lot into a lush and fertile community garden. The next thing we knew, our hands were mixing potting soil with topsoil. The smell was like being stuck at a red light behind a garbage truck.

Most of us had never gardened before. As we started blending soils, we debated, is it still too heavy? Do we need more of the light stuff? Eventually, the texture grew silky. "When it comes to mixing dirt, I would compare it to baking a chocolate cake. The way you have to mix the dirt until all the lumps are gone and the mixture is nice and fluffy. Little by little, our garden is rising into a beautiful cake," wrote Cynthia Sanchez in her E.E. journal.


Faced with seeds, seeds and more seeds, it was hard to imagine how these ground pepper-like flecks or brownish grains that looked like rice would become arugula and mesclun mixes, tomatoes, amethyst basil, Greek oregano, cilantro and push beans. And so it all began...

We planted in classroom window boxes and outside, we transformed a cement ramp into a small garden with a raised bed and clay pots. A few people even donated decorative pots and purple, white, red, and pink Impatients . Each day, we watched. And we watered. And we watched. And we watered. And then, WE HAD BEANS!!! Cilantro beat out basil, but once basil broke through the smell was delightful, outrageous and mouth-watering. The tomatoes took forever. We wondered if they would grow.

People walked by and noticed our sign -- Kenmare Goes Green -- which we designed and painted in class. Curious, they started looking over the wrought iron railing to observe what was happening in the space. Often, neighborhood residents smiled as the garden took shape and the corner of Washington and York streets got a little greener.

Near the end of the school term, we had enough herbs and salad fixings to share a meal together. We even had a few cherry tomatoes -- what we thought we'd never see or taste -- to add to our greens (some of which were bitter and, to Coco, peppery. Malisa, on the other hand, is a salad fanatic -- as are Mary Ann and Lourdes -- and was amazed that our salad, with all of its textures and scents, could compete with one you might eat at a restaurant.)

Dana, one of our classmates, decided to make homemade sauce and pizzas. She made pizzas featuring goat cheese, mozzarella, basil and oregano from our garden. "I was really happy everyone loved the pizza with the fresh basil we grew. It changed the taste of pizza and I was glad my classmates asked for seconds," Dana wrote in her E.E. journal on July 8. Soil and seeds progressed with such speed it gave us a need to feed. Indeed.