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I went to a small Montessori school on the Rio Grande while I was growing up, and among the other "new age"-y things going on at the school, we would spend half a day every week in permaculture class. We spent that class doing things like gardening, constructing adobe stuff like ovens and a gathering space shaped like a turtle (the head formed a pizza oven too - it was really cool), collecting eggs from a chicken coop, recycling fibers and scrap paper into (very brittle) paper, and making tea out of the herbs we grew - mint, chamomile, lavender, etc. One of the most profound memories I have from that school is of Ms. Susan teaching us to say "thank you" to the plants when we took a few of their leaves for the tea. We'd look at the plant, find some good leaves, pluck 'em off, and then say "thank you" and move to the next one. It was kind of an intimate moment to share with a mint plant haha. It was probably also very cute for the teachers to watch a flock of kids roam around a garden and stare intently at some herbs for an hour. It was the kind of thing that really sinks in when you're a kid. I didn't know it wasn't a "normal" kind of education, and I just figured, "we take our time and say thank you to the plants when take something from them" was a general rule of life that the adults follow too. I really cherish those memories now! Sometimes I thought they were boring af at the time - learning about compositing toilets isn't really priority #1 for a 9 year-old - but I hope other kids growing up are taught a similar connection to nature today. We've gotta say thank you to the plants! |