The winter months are when gardeners, farmers, and planters spend their time dreaming and planning for the spring, and it is no different for the young gardeners of Slate School. Beginning in early January, the entire school community begins to think about what we will grow in our school garden this coming season.

The first year, the pond was not much more than a big round bowl of water. A jumble of cobbles and boulders that trailed down from the driveway and some nearby maples were the only landmarks. Visits from migrating Canada geese and passing ducks throughout the fall brought us down to the water’s edge with children, and then in the Winter its frozen surface was a laboratory for exploring ice…

The children dreamed up a garden. They planned and planted, selected and sowed, watered and waited. And then, sprouts reached for the sun and roots took hold! The Slate School garden that we saw on the last day of school in June - full of young plants, light green and unfurling - was quite different from the mature garden we returned to on the first day of school this September.

During one of the occasional thaws this winter, the kindergarteners in Treetop made an amazing discovery - the “Pipe Pond!” The sight and sound of running water called to them across the stretch of wetland meadow between the Piney Woods and the driveway. They found the source of the water tumbling out of a drainage culvert. Something easily overlooked by many inspired the wonder we see here every day.