This is a guest post from Anna Menkis, a student at Lincoln-Sudbury High School and a member of the school’s environmental club.

Once upon a time, there was a group of pretty strange teenagers with a dream of making a difference in their town through their environmental club. They had made countless efforts at projects to reduce waste, increase recycling, and make everyone around them aware of the environment.

One day, the good environmental witch of the South came popping in with her sparkling bubbles and offered these students some magical soil she had found in the fantastical land of the Sudbury community gardens. She wanted the kids to grow fresh veggies for people who had none.

So the kids asked the good land of ACE to help them buy something to keep the evil, ravaging creatures that live in the the vast forests of Sudbury out of their garden. They also convinced the magical land of Cabot to match all the money the good people of ACE had given them.

Then they set out to find the cheapest things they could get their hands on. In their quest they found netting for their fence, seeds, and watering cans. Meanwhile, they asked their all-knowing search engines about different veggies that they could plant in their new garden. Each of them found out how to start the seeds, what the they needed, and how long they took to grow into majestic, full-grown plants.

Finally, the day they had all been waiting for arrived, and they all went out to that fantastical land together where they turned up dirt, put up the fence and made the garden all ready and safe for the plants to grow. Then, when the sun told them it was time and had satisfactorily warmed the earth, the strange kids carefully put each seed lovingly into cozy cribs in the ground. There, the baby plants cried out for water. The kids watered them every day, warding off the weeds that were trying to eat their poor baby lettuce.

With time and love the baby seeds grew into strapping adolescents, the same age as the strange kids who we planting them! Then the kids put up trellises so the peas could go through puberty and reach a healthy adulthood! It was then that the kids decided to adopt some baby pepper and tomato plants to keep their cucumbers, zucchini, beans, lettuce and peas company. Now the teenaged peas had little brothers and sisters and all the plants are living happily in the fantastical land of the Sudbury community gardens!