Arboretum

What a day. The field trip was good, but it could've been better. I had a bunch of crazy kids who wouldn't listen, stay with the group, or keep their hands to themselves. They got everyone else wrapped up in their crazy tornado (except the girls, although some of them got fed up and yelled at the boys, at which point I had to tell them that I was the teacher and I would handle it). Sigh. I'm not sure how Camp Omega is going to go.

I remember my 5-6th grade teacher giving us 'the talk' before we went: if anyone is misbehaving/not listening, they will be calling their parents to come pick them up to go home. I think we're going to have that rule. 

Aside from behavior issues, we had a beautiful day! It was a little hot (mid-80s), bugs weren't too bad, sun shining. The gardens looked lovely. The kids had a pretty good time looking at all the stuff. We took an hour to look at gardens before our apple class, then went to the apple class at the research orchard five minutes away, then came back to the Arboretum to eat lunch and look at more stuff.

The orchard was neat. They plant apple seeds (around 10,000), let them grow for 8 years, and specifically pollinate certain flowers to try to create new varieties. Then they taste the apples, only one bite per tree. If it's a good impression, they keep the tree. If not, they cull it. If it's good, they keep it around for about 20 years to keep more data on production, apple quality, etc. And at that point, if it's still good, they start selling the apples and graft cuttings of those trees to sell. Pretty neat!

We got to taste two varieties of apples (Wealthy, the one first invented by the starter of the research orchard, named after his wife, and Sweet Tango, the newest variety that's supposedly even better than Honeycrisp) to test for sweet/tangy, juicy/dry, crisp/soft. After that we made cider in a cider press, basically each kid got to put an apple in the apple press while the teacher spun the wheel to grind it up/press it. 

After that, we went back to the Arb to eat lunch, then took a drive around the 3mi loop. We made one stop along the path to check out one of the many gardens before realizing that the boys were in no way able to handle being out of the car. They were shouting and running and being hoodlums, climbing on everything in sight. It took a while to get them rounded up and back in the cars. After that we stayed in the car and just looked at things as we drove past. We did stop at the hedge maze and stayed for a while to burn off energy. That went all right.

Now, I just got a call from a parent driver who learned that on the way back, one of the boys was pulling his pants down to show off his underwear in the backseat. And the other kids in the car were laughing, thereby egging him on. Lovely. Why can't they just make good choices?