First day of class

A good day.    Lots of bright, energetic, entertaining people all interested in the same thing! 

I took some photos to show you...... when I can figure out how to set up the photo thingy I'll post a slide show so you can get a feel for where we are (Seattle's Center for Urban Horticulture) and how the class logistics work.  May need to call in the troops (aka, my husband Clint, who's a technical genius) to assist.  Stay tuned on that one.

So.... how did the day go?  Well, after a "welcome" message and some general housekeeping stuff we each got to introduce ourselves.  A brief 30-45 seconds to stand up and say something.... no set format or anything so some of it was boring "nice to be here" stuff, but every so often we'd hear a good one!   One guy, a young chap, said gardening was his TV..... that got a round of applause!   One woman talked about how her Dad ran his family like a business and paid his kids to go dig up weeds. $1.50 a bucket was the reward.  Proudly she'd bring her filled-up bucket up to Dad to get her payment and Dad would stomp his foot in the bucket and push all the weeds down and tell her to go back and weed some more!    Another woman was inspired by the Barbara Kingsolver book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and started a blog to talk about her journey to a more sustainable lifestyle/diet.  I saw lots of heads nodding during that introduction..... seems like that book has touched a lot of us.  Near the end, a guy stood up to say his piece.  He talked about his hobby, photography, and how he loves photographing hummingbirds.  He wants to learn how to put food on his table, and put food on his hummingbird's table.  Loved that!   A few of us originate from foriegn ports of call..... two from Sweden, one from Belize and me.... from England.  There may have been more in the class, but they didn't introduce themselves that way.  Mmmmm, what other things did I notice?  Oh, yes, I'd say the bulk of us hold down full time jobs.... and there was a strong representation from the 20-30 something age group.  That was nice to see!

Did you know that this Master Gardener program was the first one in the country?  All other MG programs originated from this first one.  That's kinda cool.  There are currently 740 certified Master Gardeners and there'll be a hundred or so more once all us phenoms in the 2010 class graduate!   Based on some recent financial/governmental decisions our funding structure has changed (for the better is what we're being told) and we're now officially called the Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Program in King County, or WSU Extension Master Gardener Program in King County.   

After lunch we got down to our first module:  SOILS.  They used that topic as a way to introduce us to the online stuff.  We're the first class to be going through the program using an online format - which means the bulk of the learning material / assignments / quizzes / and communication are online.  Not sure how tech-savvy the students are and if it'll be a high maintenance learning curve to get us all up and running..... I'm sure there will be a few bumps in the road, but we'll get through them.

When I've digested the material each week I'll create separate blog entries summarizing key learnings from a given topic.... that way if you want to bypass my ramblings about the course and get to the gardening stuff, you can.  Be a good way for me to re-iterate what I've learned (and you to correct me when I screw up!). 

Better get to it..... want to re-review the soil stuff from yesterday and need to get cranking on this week's assignments.  I'll touch base with you later.