Ladies of Phi Sigma Sigma after morning work |
- picked up three bags of litter along Main Street, Stoddart Avenue and the alleys between Main and Bryden and Fairwood and Morrison;
- watered our neighbor and food pantry plots twice,
- weeded the space between the alley and the Garden,
- pruned and bagged sunflowers and other debris I left along the Garden and our paths,
- pruned the scrub brush in the Block Watch lot across the street,
- helped me to transplant greens, cabbage and chard, and
- helped me to harvest for the Lutheran Social Services food pantry leeks, tomatoes, peppers, collards, kale, beets, broccoli and beans.
Because of their help, I was also finally able to mound the sweet potatoes
in the food pantry plot. It was not
all work, however. The stake team added
a bit of excitement by uncovering two baby snakes and a few spiders, which lead
to quite a bit of screaming. The litter
team refused to be discouraged by some passersby who returned to mock their
litter remediation efforts.
I tried to teach them a few things while they were at the Garden, such as how to create proper mounds for sweet potatoes, etc. and how to harvest seeds for lettuce and cosmos flowers.
Yesterday was also the first day for our new WEP volunteer,
Wayne. He called me on Friday and
reported for duty on Saturday morning.
Although I didn’t think he initially knew where we were located, it
turns out that he was born and raised in the house next door to the
Garden. We are hoping that his parents
may still have pictures of the building that used to be on the Garden’s
lot. He was amazed by the changes he saw
at the SACG and the neighborhood. He
spent his morning cleaning up the area around the compost bins and tossing the
decomposing material in the bins. He also
helped prune the scrub brush across the street.
I was disappointed with our food pantry harvest. We regularly have thieves enter the Garden
over the back gate (and exit over the front flower bed fence) and steal our
tomatoes and peppers. They also finally
found our zucchini plants, so I pulled those plants and composted them. It’s too much work to water them in this
drought if someone else is going to steal our fruit. To give you and idea of how extensive the
thefts are: Only three of us are still
growing tomatoes. Everyone else has
pulled their tomato plants.
We donated 205
pounds of tomatoes last year and 263 pounds the year before. This year, we will be unlikely to reach 130
pounds. Similarly, this year, we won’t
reach 10 pounds in peppers, but donated 46 pounds last year and 67 pounds the
year before that. It’s difficult to
remain motivated to do the hard work that comes with gardening when there are
not corresponding benefits from the harvest.
It’s especially hard to be generous with folks who come by and ask for
tomatoes. I’ve had to remind a few
gardeners to direct visitors to our neighbor plot. Gene from the LSS Food Pantry asked me if I
would give up. The neighbors have the
same frustrations from living in the neighborhood and they don’t have the
choice of giving up, do they?
BTW, for those of you who are following my butternut squash
saga, it is still there. . . . . .
As I was driving away from the Garden, I stopped by
Urban Connections where Bert was
corralling volunteers. They were getting
ready to take the neighborhood kids apple picking at Lynd’s Fruit Farm in
Pataskala. Bert was concerned about
crowds, but every weekend has been nice this month, so it might not have been
too bad.
Wayne's Fabulous Work |
Our September drought is continuing until mid-October. As mentioned last week, we’ve barely received a half inch of rain in the past THREE weeks and it’s not expected to rain
again for the next week. When we
transplanted collards, I dug down 10 inches and never found any moisture in the
ground. It’s really, really dry. I’ve gotten a little annoyed with the area
weathermen for celebrating the blue skies.
Finally, Ben Gelber ran a story on Friday about how this drought will
adversely affect the Fall foliage because the leaves will drop shortly after
turning and the colors will be muted if we do not get some rain asap. The trees are very stressed and it’s been
very difficult to sprout seeds for a Fall crop without rain. One of our gardeners emailed me this morning to report that both of our tanks are now dry. The best thing I can say about our drought is
that we don’t have to mow the grass or weed as much and I love the cool nights
of Fall.
Finally, kudos to the City for finally finishing the sidewalk project at Stoddart and Main by spreading top soil around the new sidewalk. I suspect that they've also seeded it, but nothing is going to grow there until it rains . . . .
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