Unlike the boys, the girls have been very diligent in
tending their plots. We’ve pulled the
spent pea vines and Chinese cabbage and replaced them with kale and collards –
not because that’s what the girls want, but because that’s what their
grandmother wants to cook. Although
their families have been rejecting virtually everything I send home with them
from their plots (which has caused me to pull some of my hair out), this week
they became big fans of the romaine lettuce J’anaya planted before she moved to Mississippi. Two girls
took home two bags. Kristin/Shae has
cleaned out half of her bed, but I’m not sure why or what she plans do to with
it. The pumpkins are crowding out the
melons in the corner, and I found squash bug eggs on a few leaves on Wednesday. I pulled the leaves and thinned a few more to
create more light for the melons. One of
the girls questioned why I pulled her pea vines, which were covered with dry
pods of unharvested peas. I told her I
was saving the seeds so that we could plant them later. As it was, she had two volunteer pea vines
created by her neglect of the peas over this season.
I found squash borers in the beds next door. I wasn’t really sure what they were, but I
killed one and decided to do some research to confirm my suspicions. This is what a squash borer looks like and
should be killed on sight without a second thought. They lay eggs, which hatch
and the larvae burrow into the zucchini stem and hollow it out as they eat. This causes the leaves to wilt and eventually
kills the plant. The tell-tale sign is a
pile of pukish dross at the base of the stem.
Despite how gross it is, some people will slit the vine with a razor and
dig out the larvae and then try to bury the stem to keep the plant alive. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.
Someone mysteriously left a large doll to watch our neighbor
plot. I don’t know who. I don’t know why. It used to have spectacles, but Trinity got
mad at me on Wednesday for telling her to leave them alone. As soon as I walked away, she grabbed them
off the doll again and stomped on them in the alley. I earlier tried to reason with her, but she did not respect me an iota. This – along with repeatedly removing the
front gate lock and throwing it into the flower beds – has resulted in her
being banned from the Garden for the summer.
Children are welcome in the Garden with
adult supervision. However, with
the exception of Lovely, not a single neighborhood parent has set foot inside
the Garden in years. It gets annoying (when the younger kids misbehave) to be treated
like a free babysitter when I have so much other work to do every time I come
to the Garden. Kids under 5 are too young to garden on their own and they either cause problems or follow me everywhere asking me to let them help (which they cannot do). I started to march Trinity, her sister and her
two brothers (all of whom are under the age of 10) back to their home to speak
with their mother about her disrespect of Garden property, but then discovered
that they lived blocks away and south of Main. So much
for that thought . . . .
Sabrina had already weeded the food pantry plot when I
arrived earlier than usual on Saturday morning. (I had to make a detour in Bexley to avoid the 3400 contestants lined up at Capital for the American Idol auditions). I tied up some tomatoes in the food pantry
plot, watered raised beds and transplanted sunflowers, fertilized my peaked
pepper plants, pulled my wonderfully prolific snow peas, weeded a bit, searched
with Sabrina for squash bug eggs (and blessedly did not find any), chopped some
large weeds growing around our compost bins, weaved some raspberry brambles
back into the fence and planted some flowers before harvesting from my and the
food pantry plots. Sabrina donated so
much lettuce and kale from her plot that I forgot to harvest lettuce and kale
from Susan’s plot and to tidy up the excess in the neighbor bed. We had some visitors on Saturday morning. Some prayer walkers from a consortium of East Side Churches (including Christ Memorial Missionary Baptist Church on Livingston Avenue and Macedonia Baptist Church on Oak Street) were walking around the neighborhood to pray for the residents and people. I gave them a tour and they formed a prayer circle to pray for us.
Neal came by to tend his plot and prune his raspberry bushes. I mistakenly pulled a kale plant out of the ground while I was harvesting, so we transplanted it into his plot. Then, I was able to leave by 1 p.m. – ahead by mere minutes of Sabrina. We were both touched with a little heat stroke. (There’s no shade at the Garden). After I got home and had my Mt. Dew, I remembered what I forgot to do. Maybe I wouldn’t have forgotten if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to leave and return to air conditioning or if I hadn't been so hot or my blood sugar hadn't been so low. So, I’ll be back today (after this a brief rain squall) to harvest the produce I forgot and take it to the Salvation Army tomorrow.
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