On Wednesday, February 2, 2016 parents came together to prepare for a monthly Salad Day at Rosa Parks Elementary. Many of the parents are part of the Green Team that helps us raise money for CommunityGrows garden educators at Rosa Parks. They devote their mornings once a month to gathering produce (some from the Rosa Parks Gardens and some donated by Whole Foods on California Street). Then begins the task of washing and spinning the lettuce, grating and cutting carrots and apples and assembling trays of the delicious salad. We want to particularly give a shout out to Regina Deacon, Bret Lobree, Debra Price-Seo and Jocelyn Herndon, picture below, 
as well as Mie Yaginuma and Miné Ikep pictured below with Cha’Shay Woldridge, our Rosa Parks Garden Assistant. 
These folks, and many others like Barb Fujimoto, and Chris and Wayne Hiroshima (grandparents) have been devoted to the school and garden and salad days for a long time. After Cha’Shay started the morning off harvesting kale from the garden, she joined the parents to prepare the salad. Satsuma oranges, apples, carrots, cucumbers, and a organic leaf lettuce mix were topped off by broccoli and arugula flowers.
Miné Ipek created a delicious salad dressing a few year back that is used for Salad Days and sold at fund raisers for the school. The dressing consists of chopped carrots, celery, onions, apples, and ginger blended with soy sauce, vinegar and salad or olive oil. Delicious! Once the students begin to arrive in the cafeteria they happily devour the salad until every shift of students has been served and the salad bowls are empty. 
It is wonderful to see how enthusiastic the youth are about eating salad and enjoying Salad Day. After checking out Salad Day we went out to the upper garden to see what Jay Jordan, our CommunityGrows Rosa Parks Garden Educator was up to. He was between classes and designing a new layout for the garden. Thanks to all the recent rain, paths were made to collect the water so that it wouldn’t lie in puddles. Through those paths a new layout for the garden emerged. 
The rain was also a welcome gift because it filled the new water catchment cisterns installed in December. Both cisterns are full with water now for the garden. 
The new Rosa Parks greenhouse is just beginning to take shape and shelves will be installed soon. In the meantime, sweet potatoes are growing inside. 
In digging the paths, Jay uncovered a huge boulder and will have fun removing it in a few days with Ziek McCarter, another CommunityGrows garden assistant. 
Students are growing and eating healthy thanks to all the wonderful people who come together at Rosa Parks. Thank you for partnering with CommunityGrows! We really appreciate you all! For more photos see our Flickr Photostream here.