One day, the principal called Elena to her office. There were budget cuts. The garden program, the little pots, the morning watering ritual—it was all considered “supplemental.” Not essential.
Every morning, before the first child arrived, she would open the windows of the small classroom. The air from the patio carried the smell of wet earth and jasmine. She kept a row of pots on the sill—not decorative plants, but working plants: basil, mint, a struggling little tomato that the children had named Ramón.
“We don’t shout at the plants,” she would say gently when a child grew impatient. “We wait. We give water. We speak softly.”