The next morning, in class, once we had taken the roll and everyone had shouted Múinteoir Emer told us the good news that Mr Manley had given us the go ahead to plant a mini bee meadow on the school grounds.

He actually thought the bee meadow was a great idea, being cheap, outdoors and, best of all, something ‘that crowd down in St Gobnait’s would never think of.’ He hoped it might even get us the GREEN FLAG he’d had his eye on. So, he was willing to give us one of the old, raised flowerbeds at the back of the prefab to use. And, better still, Brendan the caretaker would help us with the DIGGING and planting.

When Múinteoir Emer had finished telling us all this and everyone had stopped CHEERING and CLAPPING, I told her that I had some good news too – I had got my dad to lend us a few gardening tools we could use. I pulled them out and held them up one by one to show the class.

Múinteoir Emer said that, while she was very glad that I was showing such a great interest in the project, to be on the safe side she would mind the tools until the actual digging started. Right now, the first step was to form GROUPS, so she put us all into committees. There was:

THE DIGGING COMMITTEE

who were in charge of digging up all the weeds in the old flowerbed. (This was most of the boys except Liam because, after I showed everyone my gardening tools, we discovered that he is also afraid of rakes. I suppose it was lucky that I didn’t bring the pickaxe after all.)

THE FINANCE COMMITTEE

who would collect 50 cents from everyone so we could buy the wildflower seeds from the local Co-op. (This was Big Bow Rebecca and Cian, who I almost forgot to tell you is my mortal enemy because he is always eating smelly egg sandwiches and likes to wipe his drippy nose on the sleeve of his jumper, so I was glad I wasn’t in that group.)

THE PLANTING COMMITTEE

who would be in charge of sowing the seeds. (This was most of the class because everyone knew this would be the best and most fun bit, so it was the only committee anyone wanted to be on when we had a vote.)

THE PHOTOGRAPHY COMMITTEE

who would be in charge of taking pictures to DOCUMENT our work. (This was just Oisín because he is actually a very good photographer and no one else had a camera.)

THE PRESENTATION COMMITTEE

who would make the PowerPoint presentation of our project and complete the online application form. (This was just Lucy O’Leary because she likes writing and because she is clever and also because the rest of us thought it sounded too boring and too much like hard work.)

THE SOCIAL MEDIA COMMITTEE

We didn’t really need this, but Ellie Jones has a TikTok account and wanted to create a dance video about our project. Múinteoir Emer didn’t think it was appropriate but Ellie’s mam, Gloria Jones (our annoying nosey neighbour), is on the Parents’ Association and she INSISTED.

AND FINALLY, THE ART COMMITTEE

which me, Maya and Laura were on because Múinteoir Emer said a permanent marker in my hands was a MUCH SAFER bet than a shovel.

To be fair she was probably right. Anyway, I didn’t mind because me and Laura were going to get to make all these cool signs that would say stuff like:

And we would get to put them up all around the school and near the meadow to warn the other classes not to touch the flowers.