This picture was taken at the Edible Schoolyard at the Martin Luther King School in Oakland. It’s the sort of place I would love for my daughter to go. In the picture you can see a handful of young human beings sitting in a garden surrounded by young plant beings. Vines curl their tendrils around the beams of the ramada, flowers break open their blossoms, canes send forth their berry.
Both the children and the plants are at school together. They are all learning. They are all peers.
The young human beings nurture the young plant beings. When it comes time for the children to eat, they take the body, the leaf, the fruit, the seed, the progeny from the plant beings and ingest it. Their own beings use the energy from the plant beings to grow and emerge.
Ideally, their own waste – the carbon dioxide they exhale and perhaps even their own shit – one day may become food for the plant beings.
That whole process is what we call life. It’s a verb: to be.
Quite tragic and beautiful, really.
Snowflakes Edge 
Yo, man, the thing about the edible school yard is it’s alive. And the reason it’s alive is that the kids plant it and water it and tend it and pull out the bullies. They get it long before it’s a “Vegetable.” The understand deep down in their guts that they love these plants and that these plants give them parts of themselves to cook up and EAT. Damn it’s almost family by then. And it is family. See…
Don’t ever type a reply without proof reading. So that should say, ” They understand…”