Wall-Es Garden Written and Illustrated by Nicole Barber
Photograph CC by Kayla Casey, 2009. http://tinyurl.com/kq3v3j2
Slide 3
Only a little while ago, the Earth wasnt a very nice place to
live. There were bad smells everywhere. My grandmother once told me
the air used to be worse, which I cant even imagine. Apparently, a
long time ago, the Earth was clean. Id heard stories that it used
to be a great place to live, with clean air, plants, and other
animals. I found that very hard to believe.
Slide 4
While there werent any other animal species, I had found a
friend. He is a robot, and he looked after me. His name is Wall-E.
Wall-E uses power to be able to run, but he gets his energy from
the sun, so he isnt making the air yuckier. Back when people lived
on the Earth, so Im told, they had different forms of making power
that made the air very dirty. I was glad theyd gone away; the air
was bad enough as it was without people making it even worse.
Slide 5
One day when I had been out with Wall-E while he worked, Wall-E
found something beautiful. It was a plant. An actual plant, growing
in the ground! I had never seen a plant before. It was so green! I
didnt know how it had grown, but I was so glad that it had. I guess
Wall-E thought so too, because he picked it up and brought it back
to our house.
Slide 6
After a while, Wall-E went away for a very long time. I dont
know where he went, but I missed him. Then he suddenly returned
with a whole massive ship full of people. The old stories about
people must have been true! I hoped the people wouldnt make the
Earth dirtier again, but they did seem keen to help clean it
up.
Slide 7
One of the first things the leader of the people did was to
plant our beautiful green plant in the ground and give it some
water. Wall-E told me that plants need water to survive, and that
they have roots in the ground that drink up the water and also get
plant food from the soil. Wall-E told me that plants need the sun
for energy just like he does!
Slide 8
Would you believe there are other animals here! One of the
human children was playing in the dirt and found a worm. Wow! The
Earth must really be recovering! Worms live underground, digesting
the soil, making it better food for plants. Wall-E told me that
worms eat dirt, dead leaves, and food scraps. But they dont like
onions and citrus peel. I dont even know what onions and citrus
peel are!
Slide 9
The people who came on the ship must have found out about
different types of plants, because they started to plant some
seeds. Maybe there was a special room on the space ship that held
plants and animals. The seeds were all different sizes and shapes.
The humans loosened the soil with a shovel and a pitchfork, and
planted the seeds in little rows. Then they covered up the seeds
with a bit of soil and watered them fairly often. They didnt have
to water the seeds when it rained, but I noticed they watered them
enough to keep them damp all the time.
Slide 10
Nothing seemed to happen for a while. For weeks! I hadnt known
that growing food would take so long. Wall-E told me that it takes
80 days from planting carrots to being able to harvest them, 140
days to be able to harvest onions, and 100 days for tomatoes to be
ready for picking. Thats a very long time for a cockroach! 80 days
140 days 100 days
Slide 11
Later, tiny seedlings started to appear. More seemed to appear
every day for a little while. The children and even the adults were
very excited, and ran around pointing to all the differently shaped
plants. I was pretty excited too, I have to say. All this life,
where only a short time ago there was nothing but rubbish and dirty
air. Actually, Wall-E told me that the plants help make the air
clean. Its called photosynthesis. The plants take in carbon
dioxide, use the sun and the green part of themselves (called
chlorophyll) to make energy, and let out oxygen. Because they use
up carbon dioxide and let out oxygen, they make the air easier to
breathe.
Slide 12
The plants all started growing bigger and bigger with more and
more leaves. Then some of them became even more beautifulthey
started growing flowers on their stems! I liked the tomato flowers
the best. They had lovely yellow petals, and yellow is my favourite
colour. Photograph is CC by Theo Elliott, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/kb8gzp6
Slide 13
When I went to look at my favourite yellow flowers one morning,
there was a big buzzy creature flying around in and out of them! I
started to panic, but then I found Wall-E, and he told me it was
just a bee and I was not to worry. Apparently bees are needed to
help the plants grow fruit. So the stripy bee buzzed from one
flower to the next, collecting and spreading pollen. Wall-E was
right, he wasnt hurting my flowers.
Slide 14
Soon after the bee came, the flowers started to lose their
petals. Thats when I got really excited, because I could see the
tiny tomatoes starting to grow from where the flowers used to be.
Day after day I would come and look at the growing garden,
especially my tomatoes. They were green at first, but once they got
really big (as big as me, some of them!), they turned red. That
means they are now ripe. Photograph is CC by jayneandd,2010
http://tinyurl.com/kcth5mv
Slide 15
I started running up the plant towards one of the tomatoes,
just as a human came over to pick one. That was a mistake Id
forgotten that humans dont like cockroaches. The human screamed,
and flicked me off the tomato. My tomato! Then the human ran
towards me, and his big foot came stomping down right next to me. I
turned and fled, running as fast as my little legs could carry me.
Im pretty quick, but the human was right behind me.
Slide 16
Luckily, around the corner of the garden bed I ran into Wall-E.
Wall-E raised one of his eyebrows as I ran up him, and giggled as I
ran over some of his sensors. I dared to look around Wall-Es neck.
The human had stopped very close to Wall-E, and seemed to be trying
to explain that I was there. Wall-E told the human that I was his
friend, and that in fact he himself would like the tomato that I
had been dirtying (as the human said). The human didnt look very
happy about it, but he knew who Wall-E was and that he had helped
them come back to Earth. So he handed over the tomato.
Slide 17
Wall-E took me back to our new house close to the garden, and
put me down with my yummy tomato lunch. As I sat there, I looked
across at the garden. It was still getting wider and longer, as the
humans cleared away more and more rubbish, and planted more and
more trees. The tree that was planted from the boot was taller than
Wall-E now. The Earth is coming alive again. I only hope humans can
make it healthy again, then keep it that way.