The Story: Things get a little messy and disorganized at our second meeting, where we planted the stratified seeds from the first meeting in starter pods to help them germinate. We also painted garden stones to identify what each plant is once they're in the ground. The names of each plant were written on the bags they were stratified in, and I only put one bag per table, and one seed starter pallet per table, in the hopes that they would maybe kind of stay together, but they didn't. Some kids put seeds in the plant pods faster than others, and went over to help other kids. Some seed bags had more seeds than others, some kids wanted to paint more stones than others, some people took seeds from other tables, and some kids took seeds that weren't stratified from the bags of wildflower seed mixes which were on the cart for the after-project (making more take-home planters for those that finished with the seeds and the stones faster than others). Once seed pod trays were full, they went to the window ledge where I tried to write names on the lids of the trays in a timely manner, but sometimes people just put them on the windows without telling me (I was frequently busy assisting/supervising) and I had to guess which plants were in there later. It was all rather chaotic. After the program, I had to find room in staff areas of the building with wide enough window ledges to support all the trays (7 total). I knew that leaving them unattended in publicly accessible areas of the building would prove disastrous. So for at least a month, everyone's office and break room was graced with the presence of (sometimes) sprouting plants. They were all pretty good sports about it, thankfully.
The Lesson: Be prepared to be messy. We had aprons for the patrons, but that did not contain the amount of mess to be cleaned up afterwards. Paper was put down on tables to keep them from being painted, but water was necessary to start the pods, and of course some people managed to spill almost whole pitchers of water on the table, making the paper's paint-catching qualities non-existent. Thankfully acrylic paint washes off pretty easily, I made sure I had extra time to clean up, and I wore clothing I didn't care about. I don't think I can reiterate enough on this blog how messy being a librarian is. They don't tell you about this part of the job in library school, so consider yourself warned.
The Resources: I already had paints and brushes, and I bought large river rocks at a craft store for the painted garden stones. I felt it was better to do this in person rather than online, so I could pick the bags that had the best sizes and shapes of rocks for painting (smooth, semi-flat, palm-sized or bigger). I used this seed pod starter, but got it from the local hardware store.
If you thought this was the end of the story, you can think again. So keep your eyes peeled for more butterfly garden silliness.
Ambitious projects are sometimes underestimated. Love the story.
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