All That Ligustrum

I may be in over my head at work. I volunteered to get involved in a gardening grant. I just wasn't quite aware of what all it would involve before I committed myself to doing it.

But, who wouldn't fall for this tag-line, "Would you be interested in doing a gardening project where you would have 15 grand to spend on the gardening supplies?"

(I mean, getting to spend money that is not yours but all for a good cause is hard to pass up. Plus I figured, I loved growing vegetables and fruits when I lived with my parents. This would be such a great thing for a lot of the kids I teach, many of them probably have no idea what healthy food is, most less, that they can grow it themselves!)

So I volunteered to do it AND became the lead teacher of the grant.

(Because I am the only one that has the qualifications needed to be in charge of this grant. The first grant, that this one follows, was for elementary school students. That teacher is still involved, but they must have a middle school teacher or higher to be in charge of this one.)

Then I was informed we wouldn't be planting any fruits or vegetables. In fact, we'd only be planting native plants. And we would need to build the beds we were growing them in first. Twenty of them in fact, and they are huge! And when the plants were ready we would be transferring them to the City Park to replace the invasive plants that have taken over there.

Oh, and we'd need to get rid of all the invasive plants at the City Park.

But, before we do that we'd need to map out what the park looks like and where the invasive plants are. And we'd need to be pretty accurate and use GPS coordinates.

So that means I need to learn a bit about how to make such a map and use such a GPS.

Then, I'm going to need to teach those skills to the kiddos, because they are the ones that need to do this after all.

Good thing this park is a 15 minute drive from my school.



The other day all of the people working on the grant got together (except the one lady at my school that talked me into this and knows more about it). That's where I really realized how unqualified I am for this task. I know nothing about invasive and native plants (other than their definitions). And they kept complaining about how the hardest part of this grant was going to be all that ligustrum.

Since I didn't know much about anything they were talking about, I didn't dare ask what ligustrum was for fear of really embarrassing myself. I figured it was something I wouldn't have to worry about with this grant and basically forgot about it.

Until we took a few students out to the park to see it for the first time. The other lady from my school that knows everything about this stuff was there along with three of my students.

When we walked up to the creek, she nearly gasped in horror, "oh my, look at all that ligustrum!"

"What? What's that?"

Then she pointed out one of the ligustrum plants to me. And I looked up and realized that the "forest" that surrounded the creek was solid ligustrum.

I mean, nothing but ligustrum.

Everywhere.

Big, strong, we need an axe to cut each of the thousands down, ligustrum.

And apparently, even if you cut it down, it will grow back. So we will have to get a master naturalist from Texas Parks and Wildlife to come out and put something on the stumps to kill them.

Lets not forget that after we do all of that we will have to take the plants we've been growing (which we have yet to start doing) and will have to move them to the park and plant them.

The thought of my students doing actual manual labor to get rid of all that ligustrum does bring my spirits up on this whole project.

Who am I kidding? I can't allow them to use axes!

I have a feeling I have many a Saturday laying ahead of me battling all that ligustrum.

Oh....all that ligustrum.