You may have to have a flexible schedule (Butterfly Garden Part 5)

The Story:  The seeds you've started in the trays have started to sprout.  Huzzah!  Some of them are being more pokey than others and you realize that if you were to wait for more plants to germinate, the early risers would be wilted and smothered by waiting too long in those tiny pods.  Good thing you're flexible and don't mind having two different sprout-planting sessions, which wind up being about three weeks apart.  Even with two sessions, there is still about a whole tray's worth of pods that never grew anything.  In fact, some of them even started to mold, sitting in the miniature greenhouses that those starter trays are.  Eventually you just had to face the fact that seeds are so numerous because there is a built-in mortality rate, and dump the dead pods.

Another thing you have to be flexible about is the idea of a neat-looking, organized garden.  The idea of having all these lovely little native plants growing up in clearly-labeled sections with pretty hand-painted stones identifying which plants are which is so far from reality that you're laughing at the past you that had the naiveté to think that was even a possibility when children were involved.  Kids planted whatever pods they wanted, wherever they wanted, regardless of your suggestions and instructions to plant the ones from this tray here and that tray there.  The trays being what you thought they were in the first place was a bit of a gamble because of how the seed-starting session went (that story is here), so it makes sense that the actual planting would be equally disorganized.  And the painted stones actually being next to the plants they're labelled for?  Forget about it!

The Lesson:  Nature is chaos.  Embrace it.  In the wild, native plants can grow in bunches of the same variety, but they just as frequently grow in heterogeneous communities that look like they were haphazardly thrown there by a bunch of five-year-olds, and this actually creates the biodiversity and balance that all ecosystems need to survive.  So, when a bunch of children haphazardly plant your carefully selected native plant species here, there, and everywhere, they're just being true to nature.  You may have to rethink what you consider a success, and that the purpose of the butterfly garden is to provide a habitat for endangered monarchs and food for other native pollinators, not to look like it was clipped from a magazine.   "Clean" gardens that are more mulch than leaf, gardens that don't have plants growing up around each other, gardens that don't use as much of the space as possible to support plant life, are gardens that don't really contribute anything to the environment.  If you're going to spend the time to teach kids about native plants and build a garden at your library, you want that project to pull its weight.

The Resources:  Get some cheap hand trowels from your local hardware store and have some gardening gloves on hand.  Most of my kids didn't want them, because who doesn't expect dirt on their hands when they're planting?  But, it's good to have some for the kids and adults that do want to use them.  I brought in extras from home and borrowed some tools from gardening friends as well, because nobody wants to pay for dozens of tools that you're only going to use once or twice a year.

You may find that aprons are just not enough (Butterfly Garden Part 4)

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.

You may have been instrumental in someone's family planning without even knowing it

The Story:  I was cleaning up one evening before closing time, picking up used guest passes and whatnot near the computers in the children's room, and what do I find?  An empty medicine wrapper, complete with instructions and drug facts.  The pill in question is no cough drop or antihistamine; it is a morning-after pill.  

I like to imagine that after a night of passion, a woman realizes she forgot to take her birth control, and rather than risk it, she runs out and gets some insurance against an unwanted baby.  Then, for whatever reason, she has second thoughts, and wonders what it would be like if she were pregnant and if she did keep it.

"But how will I know what children are like without having one?" She asks herself.  "I know, I'll go to the library!"

Little did she know what children who hang out at the library are really like.  After an afternoon sitting amongst the video game obsessed pre-teens shouting over each other on the computers and watching the parade of children throwing temper tantrums as they're hauled out by their parents, she thinks to herself, "Fuck this!  I am never having kids." and dry-swallows it, not bothering to throw away her trash, walks away, and never looks back.

Now, I want to be clear that I support a woman's right to do whatever she pleases with her body, including choosing to not have a baby by any medically sound and legal methods available to her.  The person who left this at the library did just that, and I do not fault her for it.

However, she chose not to throw the wrapper in the trash, and by littering and leaving it for me to find and clean up, whoever this woman is has willingly made herself fodder for jokes.

No lesson or resources here, except to expect the unexpected, a constant in our profession, and take the laughs where you can.

Unsolvable Mysteries: The case of the missing DVDs

If only these DVDs could talk...what a story they would have to tell.  Let me set the scene for you.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Wait that's not right.  Let me try again.

Once upon a time...

That doesn't sound right either.  I guess I'll just cut to the chase, then.

In my library, we have been having a rash of missing and mixed-up DVDs for about a month and a half now, as if some elf is going through the section when nobody's looking, rearranging which DVDs go in which cases, and removing some of them all together.  We never saw anyone over there looking suspicious, and while some of the mix-ups were clearly the same patron, there were far too many of them not connected to the same patron's record for it to be solely them.

Then one day, we get the following stack of disks in the book drop, in a ziplock bag - no note, no cases, nothing.

There were thirty DVDs there, all children's movies, and most of them were ours.  There were three oddballs, though.  Movies without cases from other libraries, but not just any libraries -- libraries from another state.  We're not even particularly close to the state border, either.  Also, some of the movies we got back were missing for so long that we deleted or reordered them.  Whatever has been going on, it has a history longer than our knowledge of it.  It's all very strange.

Popular theories include:  a child stealing DVDs for kicks and a parent discovering the stash while cleaning their room and being too embarrassed to return the DVDs in person and force the child to apologize, someone who doesn't understand how borrowing works at the library, and aliens trying to learn more about Earth's history before they decide if we're a good candidate for contact.  None of these really explain the out-of-state ones, though.  We'll never know what really happened, but if you've got some interesting ideas on the subject, we'd love to hear them in the comments.

Anyway, it's now a side-project to make new cases and/or catalog records for the prodigal DVDs, re-unite known empties with returns, and hunt down empty cases we didn't even know were missing their movies.  The out-of-state libraries in question will also be receiving a mysterious package soon with their wayward movies nestled inside, and a note explaining their bizarre circumstances of return, causing more librarians to puzzle over this unsolvable mystery.

You may wind up plotting the disappearance of a giant stuffed raccoon.

The Story:  Sometimes, a patient just can't be saved.  This giant stuffed raccoon probably started his days in a carnival game booth, but he made his way to the library after his useful life in a child's playroom was over.  Here, he was loved and played with and cherished by so many tiny hearts and hands.  This raccoon was a favorite the day he appeared in the play house.  But you know what they say:  "The candle that burns brightest burns shortest".  And so it was for our dear friend Raccoon.  His first injury was sustained after less than a month in the preschool area, but luckily our wonderful stuffed animal veterinarian was able to fix him up.  Not two weeks later, he had another injury, and was bleeding tiny foam beads all over the place.  Doctor Becka again to the rescue.  This pattern continues for the better part of nine months, until one day his injuries are so severe that he'll never recover.

As we lay the beloved raccoon to rest, we realize that we cannot just toss him in the already-full dumpster in broad daylight, top hat poking out for all the children to see as their parents pull into the parking lot.  This would cause an uproar.  So a plan is made, and with the assistance of the head custodian, we dispose of the body in the dead of night the following week.  The dumpster's been freshly emptied, and there is a cart of rejected booksale donations to go on top, covering up the dastardly deed.  For several days following the Raccoon's disappearance, we get questions from children about "When will Raccoon be back from the stuffed animal hospital?", and with an uneasy glance to the side counter behind which he rests while awaiting burial, we give a range of answers, none of them the whole truth.

The Lesson:  In a profession based on truth-seeking, sometimes a white lie is necessary.  When possible, we tried to tell the parents in some euphemistic way that the raccoon wasn't coming back, and thus let them have the conversation with their children at a time that they can handle it because they aren't running from storytime to toddler yoga to the grocery store.  Eventually, the kids stopped asking about the raccoon, and none seem traumatized, so mission accomplished.

Resources:  What kind of resources are there even in existence for this type of thing?  For librarians dealing with this situation, I don't know, probably not many.  But for parents, there are a host of good children's books dealing with getting rid of an old blanket or worn-out stuffed animal, so these might come in handy in your library if you're ever dealing with a similar situation.

Jonathan and the big blue boat / Philip C. Stead.
Blanket and bear, a remarkable pair / by L.J.R. Kelly ; illustrated by Yoko Tanaka
Franklin's blanket / Paulette Bourgeois, Brenda Clark
Too many toys! / Heidi Deedman
The velveteen rabbit, or, How toys become real / by Margery Williams
Maya's blanket / story, Monica Brown ; illustrations, David Diaz
The red woolen blanket / Bob Graham
Geraldine's blanket / Holly Keller
Turtle and me / Robie H. Harris ; illustrated by Tor Freeman

And if the child is really that upset, the parent might want to treat the loss of this toy like an actual death in the family, and there are a ton of children's books on that topic.  One I love that could be taken literally or figuratively is about a boy whose robot just keeps slowing down until it stops.  This is a grieving book for children about death, but since it is about a robot/toy, it may resonate with children missing their much-loved toy that just couldn't be saved.

Rafa was my robot / by Alexandra Dellevoet ; art by Ken Turner