"Best Practices" Garden Layout

For our group our main goal is to make sure the plants grow the right way and keep all information organized. We plan on doing this by keeping track of the dates that the plants/vegetables are grown, and it's overall completion.
We also researched some of the vegetables so we could know how far of a distance they needed to be planted from any other plant then recorded our answers onto a typed document.

Stop Motion Plant/flower

The flower that i would like to grow is a carnation because
a. it grows well in the winter
b. i wanted to do a flower rather than a plant so i thought that the carnation would be a good choice.
c. and it's easy to grow.

Senior Project Idea

During the class discussion i thought that Food was the most important out of the 7 different topics. 4) Food: Something that unites us all. Our food systems are there to feed the world...Is industrial agriculture a necessary means to this end, or is there a way that is more balanced to help maintain the earth's natural systems? Is organic enough to be sustainable? What is necessary to ensure benefits to the environment, the world's economy and equity among our communities?
Food was my topic and throughout the research that my group and I found, there was a lot of new information that I did not know about before.


For my senior project I was hoping to incorporate all the 7topics we have discussed in class, into some kind of video. I was hoping to try and send a message without having any vocals or writing in the video. It would be just video clips/photography and music to go along with it.
I still need to talk it over with my partner but hopefully it will turn out to be a good idea.

Initial Plant Research

Environmental Science

Kelsey Murphy

9/3/09

1. Strawberries

2. Daises

3. Watermelon

Strawberries are a fruit grown from the soil of any traditional bed. They are usually grown in the late spring and need full sun or at least 6hours to produce the best crop. It takes approximately three weeks for the strawberry to show growth and ripeness. They need to be separated from weeds and 1-2 feet apart from other plants. Fertilizing the strawberries is also very popular before and after harvesting. Having the site that strawberries will be grown need to be well-drained and the beds should be away from the roots of any nearby trees so it will not interfere with the fruit. There are over 200 different pests that are known to invade on strawberries, but hopefully if the right amount of care is put into them, it wont be too much of a problem. Approximately one cup of strawberries contains 45 calories as well as an excellent source of vitamin C.

Fun Fact: Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.

Daises are considered to be one of the easiest flowers to grow. They are grown from a seed and can be planted directly into the soil of the flowerbed. They need a good amount of sunlight, but if the daisies are planted into an area where it is too hot, it should bet provided with some shade. The soil should be rich with lots of nutrients. Like the strawberries, it’s a good idea to use fertilizer to encourage healthy growth. As the daisies start to grow/bloom they will need to be separated by hand to avoid “choking”. Fortunately bugs are not drawn to daisies to keeping them maintained is a rather simple. When planting the flowers, the soil needs to be as deep as 12 to 15 inches. This flower consist of many different colors such as the original daisy with white petals and a yellow center, orange petals, pink petals, orange petals, and more.

Fun Fact: Daisy leaves are edible and can be used in salads.

Environmental Sciece First Blog

What are you most interested in learning about in the natural world?

In the natural world I am most interested in the human race, and how the body works. I also am interested in the relationship between animals and humans.

Magazine Reflection

What did you learn?

Throughout this long lasting humanities project I had learned so much not only about my own writing, but making someone's writing better. We had learned everything from structure, punctuation, grammar, transitioning, and even your layout. For me, I feel that I learned a lot based on laying out my writing and how placing a paragraph or even the sub-headline can be so important. What I also learned that didn't have so much to do with my writing, was my internship itself. As I mention in my Photo Essay, I discuss how much responsibility it takes to become involved in the real world as an employee. Being at my internship San Diego Model Management, I think that I have become a much more reliable and outgoing person. It's made me realize the importance in my future and has even helped me decide on my future career path. Many students at HTHMA find their internship to be boring and almost worthless; but most student had also said they STRONGLY recommend an internship just for the experience. 

How did you learn it?

For me, I think that by just personally experiencing everything and being hands on with all the hard work was the easiest way for me to accomplish the learning. Being involved with different writing and looking at all the different views (i.e different magazines, different students writing) is truly the best way to improve your work. Most people tend to look at a really good piece of writing so they can take examples from that and put it into their own work, but I think taking a bad example can also be very helpful. Because that writing is a bad example, you can look at it, compare it, and you now know what not to put into your writing. This was a process for me that I fell helped me a lot. As far as how I learned to be more responsible for myself and becoming more outgoing, that all came from the internship experience. Some might believe otherwise and say their internship made no impact in themselves, but it certainly did if you didn't enjoy your internship because you then know thats not a path you want to take.

Why is this important?

This is all so important to me because it teaches us the benefits and struggles we get not only throughout our high school humanities class, but it gives us the chance to look ahead outside of high school, outside of college, and beyond. It's not just one subject we're learning. We combined the real world of work to our classroom work which I feel is truly the best most creative aspect of learning.

Magazine Reflection part Two

1. Overall, when you think about the big picture of your writing, what improved? How did it get better? Why?

What improved mostly in my writing throughout this year including my Internship photo essay, was my transitions between paragraphs. At first I had thought I needed most help with this, but it turned out that this was my strongest part of my writing in this project. Compared to my previous H2O photo essay i thought that this had really shown a lot of improvement.

2. Overall, when you think about the big picture of your writing, what still needs work? What do you think will help you improve? Why?

Something I feel I need improvement in is my punctuation's. Although i don't feel I'm horrible in this part of writing, i could defiantly improve in it. What will probably help me improve my punctuation's is going through books, magazines, or even newspapers and specifically looking at the different ways punctuation is used.

3. Specifically, show us something that improved and describe the path it took to get better. You can quote your article, your drafts, link to evidence, etc.

4. Describe something specific (or a few things!) that you learned about writing.