Victory Garden: Dozens pitch in at Ceres school to clean up mess left by vandals

"The recent unpleasantness" was pulled from the garden like a weed.

Jill-Marie Purdy's positive spin and dozens of helping hands cleared the mess and reclaimed the peace Wednesday in the Walter White Elementary garden in Ceres, which was vandalized over the weekend.

"They destroyed these plants, but we have peppers and tomatoes for salsa. Good things can come from this," Purdy told students and parents who poured in to help after school.

The Central Valley High FFA brought about 30 students with tools. "On Monday, after we heard, we put it up on the boards, and they all just showed up at the end of school," said FFA adviser Jessi Bishop.

Ceres Unified School District board member Valli Wigt was among the volunteers pulling dead plants from the rows. Wigt said Purdy was Ceres 2009-10 teacher of the year for good reason.

"She's always very positive. She'll turn this into a lifelong lesson, a teachable moment for the kids," she said.

Kids cleared beds and put the refuse in the compost bin. Families who normally harvest summer meals from the garden helped glean whatever produce was edible. Corn stalks were saved to be made into flutes. Marigolds were salvaged for an October celebration.

"There's always renewal in nature," Purdy said, adding with a slight catch in her voice, "You didn't get to see it before. It was truly beautiful."

Over the weekend vandals jumped the 6-foot-tall chain-link fence laced with climbing roses. They smashed student-decorated pots and bird houses, wrecked a weather station, pulled down a playhouse made by a retired teacher and broke wooden trellises that lined the raised rows.

A "secret garden" made by upper-grade students for kindergartners was ruined. Doorways of vines -- small so only little ones could go through -- were yanked out. Miniature vegetables planted for tiny fingers to pull and wiggly teeth to chew were trampled.

"This was rage," said Purdy, a fourth-grade teacher. "It was quite thrashed. We just have to hope (the ones that did this) have better days ahead of them."

She said she understands these things happen, but her students are struggling.

"I was pretty mad," said fifth- grader Jesus Garcia. "We spent all our work here last year, and to see what someone's done -- it really stunk."

"I was shocked because I have lots of good memories here, of kids working here. And now it's all destroyed," fifth-grader Emily Almanza said.

Cherise Azevedo, president of the Central Valley FFA and a Walter White alumna, said, "I always liked it in the garden. I was kind of crushed."

She leaped at the chance to help put the ruined patch to rights.

"This is a great opportunity. Like the phoenix rises from the ashes," Purdy told the group before they left. "Go out and do more amazing things for the planet," she said, nearly drowned out by the cheers of teenagers.

Next, Purdy said, will come "a time of rest and reflection." The garden exists on donations, so what she refers to as "the recent unpleasantness" was a financial as well as planting setback.

But then Purdy took a deep breath and leaned forward in her chair with a grin. She'd been thinking now might be a good time for a rock 'n' roll garden.

"There's Red Zeppelin onions and there's Purple Haze carrots," she said, eyes twinkling. Then she nodded briskly.

"That's how you handle it. That's how you heal. You move on."

Bee education reporter Nan Austin can be reached at naustin@modbee.com or 578-2339.