Doss Wildscape Blog

Have you seen the new OWL Center lately?  Spring is here and the kindergarten, 1^st and 3^rd grades are all using the garden area to plant.  The OWL Club (after school gardening) had a successful inaugural year using the reflection area for lessons, planting in the rain ladder, making stepping stones and tending to our dozens of native plants in the wildscape area around the pond.  Check it out!

As part of Earth Week, from April 16-20, the OWL Center will be collecting new and gently used tools. So if you find an extra rake you never use while you are doing your spring cleaning, REUSE it by bringing it to Doss!  We will have a box for collections outside the front office.

Needed items:

• Rakes, adult and children sizes
• Shovels
• Trowels
• Wheelbarrow
• Bags of dirt/soil
• Anything you have that you think we can use!

- Shannon Sherwood, Green Team Chair

We all know this common phrase and try to follow as best we can.  Recently, in preparation for the upcoming Earth Week, the OWL Center was able to “REUSE” – in a BIG way – right on our campus!

Our OWL Center co-chairs had planned to purchase a new shed to store tools and equipment for our teachers and students.  However, the cost of soil and plants almost depleted the OWL budget for this year.  We were looking at used sheds on Craig’s List and smaller (inadequate) sheds at hardware stores.  None of the sheds were quite right.  How could we get a shed, with not enough money in the budget, to store the valuable tools the teachers and students needed to tend to the OWL Center gardens?

A wise OWL mom asked, “What’s in that white shed in the teacher parking lot?”

We explored the shed with Janna and found that it was virtually empty.  So, Janna said – let’s put it to use in the OWL Center!

A crew of Doss dads are going to relocate the shed so all teachers will have access.  It is a beautiful, large, clean, storage place that we never could have afforded out of our PTA budget.

Way to go Doss!  REUSing saved us money and enabled us to have a great storage facility for our ever-growing OWL Center!

-       Glenda Beasley and Megan Helmbrecht, OWL Center Co-Chairs

For our next-to-the-last meeting of the OWL Club, members from Texas Audubon came to teach our students about the plants in our gardens. They discussed how the gardens provide food, shelter, and water to native wildlife.  The kids learned that the Golden Cheeked Warbler is the only bird in the world that nests only in Central Texas.

Next week, Ms. Murr and Mr. Mankovsky will lead us for our final meeting for the spring.  We expect to be learning about composting . . . and maybe about erosion as well.  Can’t wait!

Many of our native plants are in full bloom around the dry creek bed!

This spring, Jennifer Webb and I have led 16 enthusiastic Doss students in our inaugural OWL Club.  Each week, a different guest speaker comes to teach us about the wildscape, native plants, the water cycle . . . you name it!  Our very own Katie Pena taught the kids about aquifers, and Holley Gaskill, volunteer-extraordinaire, helped the kids add plants to the rain ladder she installed this fall.

Before Spring Break, the OWL Club Members made stepping stones.  We’ll be placing them around the gardens in the next week or two.  Keep any eye out for these masterpieces!

The rain ladder uses the existing basketball game and filters water into the reflection area beds.

Both pictures in this post were taken by Glenda Beasley, OWL Center Chair.

The OWL Center is having an amazing impact on our children! Many thanks go to all of the community, parent and teacher volunteers that have helped our OWL center dream become a reality! Such wonderful reads… – the OWL team

Our OWL center continues to grow and flourish!  A recent photo by Julie Choyce shows us the beauty it provides day and night.  The solar lights were donated by 5th grade teacher, Allison Cardwell, who allowed us to reuse them once a Solar learning project was completed.  Thank you Julie and Allision for thinking of our OWL Center and to the many teachers and faculty who invest their personal time, ideas and energy into making our OWL center a success.

The art project is progressing! We look forward to updating our Doss community in the Spring when it is primed for public viewing.

February 13th is the first day of our Doss OWL Garden club. It will run for 6 weeks and is hosted by Kelly Rizk and Jennifer Webb.  Gina Longoria will assist us the first week to ensure a smooth start.  15 doss kids will experience gardening maintenance, “Walk and Wonder” activities to get to know the garden and be introduced to many guest speakers to learn about native plants, rain ladders, erosion and much more.

Happy February!  – your OWL team.

This spring, Kelly Rizk and Jennifer Webb will be running an after-school club to give kids a chance to engage with the new OWL Center.  Here’s a peek into what the OWL Club Members will do:

• Clean up the garden by weeding and watering
• Make a craft to support wildlife in the gardens
• Use critical thinking and inquiry skills to learn about the gardens
• Engage with nature

Does this sound good to you?  If so, sign up as soon as possible.  We’ll meet in the reflection area on Mondays from 3:00 to 4:30 from February 13 through March 26.

 Space is limited.  We are accepting up to 15 children in kindergarten through third grade. 

 If you are interested, please contact Kelly Rizk (kelly.rizk@gmail.com or 512-903-8864) as soon as possible.  Provide your child’s name, teacher, and grade.  We will also need to collect $15 to cover the cost of the craft materials.

Hope to see you out and about the gardens! – Your OWL team

We are so proud of our OWL Center and all the progress our kids and volunteers made last Friday on our planting day! Here is some of the goodness from our babes we heard  – ”I love getting my hands dirty!”, “Can we do this next recess?”, “I am going to show my mom and granddad”, “We want a garden at home” and our favorite of all “We get to have class out here!”.  With over 50 plants in the ground, our garden is beautiful and growing. 

It has been an amazing year of progress.  Looking back at the vision and how much work had to be done in order for Friday to happen is truly a lesson in evolution. To think this is just Phase I, so much more to come including possibly ideas for an art mural, walkways, additional plants, a podium for the reflection area and more! Next up, the OWL club starting in February, led by Kelly Rizk and Jennifer Webb, which will be focused on engaging kids in the OWL Center through crafts, gardening, maintenance and education. 

We want to thank Vice Principal Katie Pena, 3rd grade teacher -Ms. Emily Murr and 2nd grade teacher -Mr. Josh Mankovsky for leading 200+ students through a day of planting and garden tending.   We also want to thank the parents who came out to help us throughout the day as well as the community volunteers and Texas Parks and Wildlife. Our community support has been wonderful – we had plants donated from the Native Plant Society and LBJ Wildflower Center.  Jane Tillman and David Herberly were gracious with their time and knowledge to guide us on the best plants for our OWL center.  Without our community partners, the sustainability of the OWL would not be possible.  Native plants, proper irrigation considerations and maintenance are key to an area like we have.

Please visit the following sites for pictures of our OWL Center progress and our little Helping Hands at work.  Ms. Murr’s OWL Center photos, Julie Choyce’s photos and of course the Doss Green Team Facebook page for other upcoming events in our Doss community.

Thanks so much for your continued support,

Your OWL team

Thank you to Ranch Road Design and Printing for our new logo.   It captures the vision of who we are and the happiness we want to bring to our Doss children. 

The Square Foot Gardens fed two Kindergarten classes last week when Ms. Hill and Ms. Hodges served our first meal from our OWL center.  Radishes, salads and beets were on the menu and the Kindergarteners loved eating what they planted. We greatly appreciate Ms. Hill and Ms. Hodges taking advantage of the garden area and keeping it maintained and beautiful for our children to enjoy.  Just think how much money we could all save if Doss had its own herb garden? Fresh rosemary and thyme anyone? Yummy beet salads? All from the hands of our kiddos.