Good Golly Miss Molly

Mayweather was not the only one to achieve a technical knock out yesterday.  The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden was freakishly busy knocking out projects ourselves. We were again the lucky beneficiaries of The Ohio State University’s Pay-It-Forward Program which sent us 30 hardworking and dedicated college students who helped us move the needle forward on our 2017 capital improvement project, clean up our weedy alley, water our food pantry plots and a few flower beds, tidy the Block Watch lot across the street and find a new bee hive, weed the tomato bed next door at Kimball Farms and pick up almost 20 bags of litter in a four block area around the Garden.  This all went relatively smoothly because I had  LOTS of help from Sabrina, Ken and Amy to each supervise a team of students.

Poison Ivy Part I.  Earlier this month, while I was cursing and pulling bind weed off of the raspberry brambles in the raised bed area of the SACG, I forgot to pay attention to whether the poison ivy had returned.  Mistake.  It had.  I wasn’t just pulling bind weed; I was also pulling bind weed and poison ivy willy nilly.  Considering how careless I was, I got off lucky.   On Sunday night, my right arm started to itch and form a rash.  By Monday, I had many blisters the size of dimes.  On Tuesday, more blisters kept appearing, so a doctor who casually noticed my unsightly arm prescribed me some steroids (which was a first for me and was almost an out-of-body experience).   I now have some slight scarring, but my arm looks better and I think the scar will fade away eventually.

Before the volunteers (in July)

I was so annoyed with this that I declared war on the poison ivy in that corner even if it meant killing every living thing within 10 square feet around that area.  Napalm in the morning sounded like the right approach.  I went over with a large sprayer of Round Up that I purchased last year, but the nozzle was clogged.  Curses!  Foiled again.  Sabrina took pity on me, declared that she was not allergic to poison ivy and chopped away at the brambles and weeds on the Garden side and identified for me various poison ivy vines.  I returned with the special Round up for Poison Ivy and napalmed the entire area.  If all of the brambles died, too, so be it.  We can plant more next year.    Grrr.    I’ve been sharing this tale with anyone silly enough to ask me about the Garden or to stop by this month.

 This did not stop me from attacking the far more pernicious poison ivy in the Block Watch lot yesterday, though.  More on that later.

Capital Improvement Project.  OSU contacted me a few weeks ago to confirm Saturday’s work day

After the OSU volunteers

and the times.  They would arrive between 10:30 and 11 and leave between 1 and 1:30.  I was able to dig all 8 post poles, but Ken and Taylor had to finish some of them off for me.  Then, Taylor helped me two Wednesdays in a row (even though he had brought his visiting-from-Florida mother with him last week) to place the fence posts so that we would have them up in time for the OSU students.    Ken and I had not resolved our dispute over how to build the fence.  I wanted to build it in sections (which he thought was a terrible idea because of how difficult it would be to keep the stringers and picket tops in a straight line), and he wanted to put up the stringers and then attach the pickets (which I know is a terrible idea because it would destroy the front flower bed with more than two months left in our growing season and be almost impossible for the areas behind the rose bushes).  Besides, I pointed out, the fence needs to be painted before it goes up because you will not be able to paint the back side of the stringers or pickets once they are attached (since we are keeping the wire fence in place to use as a growing trellis and to keep out bunnies and other four legged critters that like to crawl under gaps in our prettier fence).    He saw the wisdom of this and worked on adjusting his plan.

When the OSU students arrived around 11 a.m., I told them about the SACG, offered them overly-dry chocolate no-bake cookies that I had made the prior evening and bananas that Sabrina picked up, etc. and split them up into teams.  (Usually, the OSU kids have had a huge kick-off breakfast and don’t eat until the end of the day, but this group wanted to start eating immediately – making me suspect that they had not had enough to eat for breakfast).  One team of 8 helped Ken.  He cut down the stringers to size (and leveled the posts).   They hauled up pickets and stringers from our storage location at UrbanConnections, and painted them on all sides.  (The lumber and paint were donated by the City of Columbus and subsidized by Lowe’s Home Improvement Store).   I had only brought one painting tarp from home and so they could only paint so much lumber in the time available.   We had abundant sunshine to dry the paint quickly, but the wood absorbed much more paint than we had budgeted for and I think that I will have to buy more paint since we are only 1/3 finished and only have a half can remaining.

(Before the OSU volunteers . . . in July)

Sadly, the OSU bus came early (well before 1 p.m.) because the other OSU volunteer group sharing the bus finished early and wanted to return to campus.  So, we did not get many pickets attached.   Ken worked for a few minutes after they left and may return on Wednesday to attach a few more.  We do not have another student group scheduled (that could finish the project) until Capital University students come on September 23 for the annual Crusader Day of Service.  (It's becoming a pattern that my OSU and Capital University student groups tag team to complete our major capital improvement projects).     However, I think that the new fence looks fantastic and compliments our trellis entrance (that was donated and installed last year). 

After the OSU volunteers

The Alley Campaign.  It’s always a challenge to keep our alley side looking tidy when we do not have volunteers.  I tend to focus my time on growing vegetables and then the flowers.    It’s been looking extremely weedy for more than a month and the strawberry patch has been very neglected (even though it is an assigned chore) and this is surprising because there are actually strawberries growing in it.    Amy took charge of a crew of 4-6 students who weeded the strawberry patch, cleaned the weeds out between the alley and the Garden (including around and in the compost bins) and straightened up our stone curb. Amy was understandably proud of their achievement and then she spent some time weeding the front flower bed.

When they finished this, I had one of them restock and tidy our Free Little Library with a box of books that had been donated by Half Price Books.  She emptied the entire box and filled the library.  (Hint, Hint:  I'm out of books for our Free Little Library and would welcome donated books if you have any). 

I assigned two of volunteers to weed the paths and around our raised beds.  Two of them (now low on blood sugar and moving slowly) weeded and straightened up a bench.

The rest were sent next door to weed the tomato raised bed at Kimball Farms (which has spent the week building a high tunnel for winter produce production.  (The Mid-Ohio  Food Bank received a federal grant to subsidize the construction of high tunnels at area community gardens.  It’s a great project, but I need my winters off.). 

The Watering Crew.  Sabrina took three young men and helped them to water most of the Garden, including the food pantry plots and some of the flower beds and fruit trees.  They then weeded the neglected raised bed outside the Garden and harvested three giant carrots for our food pantry donation.  She then went around and grabbed lots of produce to reward Ken for all of his hard work, planted several rows of lettuce in our food pantry plots,  and helped me with finishing the food pantry weekly harvest.

The Litter Crusaders.  Some years lots of volunteers want to pick up litter; some years none do.  Robert Seed is back to work at Keep Columbus Beautiful.  He had to suffer through my retelling of my poison ivy woes and volunteered to help me with my clogged Round Up sprayer.  He also stopped by the Garden in case there was something that he could do.   It then belatedly occurred to me that I had not made arrangements with him to get litter grabbers, etc. for our OSU volunteers.  Fortunately, he was able to accommodate us.  Good thing, because this was the most gung-ho litter pickers the SACG has ever had.  Many times, our litter picker volunteers come back with just three half-bags of litter and I just look at them incredulously.  No way.  What were you doing for the last hour if that is all you came back with?    I purposely did not pick up the plastic bags that blew onto our lot this last week because I wanted to leave something for our OSU volunteers to do. 

After one hour, this crew came back with about 10 bags of litter.  I asked them to then hit our alleys, but they already had.  They had already covered Morrison and Fairwood and Stoddart and the alleys in between.  They grabbed a cookie and headed south of Main on Lilley.   They came back with more full bags and a pair of crutches.

The volunteer potatoes grew into a dough boy

Free Little Pantry.  I diverted two of them to distribute a newsletter in the neighborhood about our proposed Free Little Pantry. Ken was excited about it, but a bit discouraged about the Board’s general lack of passion for the project.  I explained that it was more about how the pantry would be stocked because building it was just a first step.  The Dispatch has run a number of stories about the Free Little Pantry a few blocks away on Livingston.  Life Vineyard Church also put up a not-so-little one near the intersection of Main and Alum Creek and it is perpetually understocked.  The lady who constructed the one on Livingston reported that she refills it every day and spends approximately $50/week in doing so.  Our annual budget is a just little more than $100, so $2500 (i.e., $50 x 50 weeks) would overwhelm the SACG.  I like the idea, but I’m not willing to take responsibility for this by myself.   After a little research at littlefreepantry.org, I told him that I would survey the neighborhood to see if there were any strong objections or support for it.  I don’t want to foist a project on the neighborhood to which they will object, and we will obviously need a lot of help to keep it stocked.  I told the neighborhood that we would need between 15-20 groups, families or individuals to agree to stock it one day each month to proceed with the project.  Mari (from our Board) volunteered to take a day.  Otherwise, it’s been 24 hours and I have received neither objections nor volunteers.

I also invited the neighbors to help with our fence project by helping to attach pickets or paint.  (The kids often like to help paint, even though they usually get as much paint on themselves and as on the project).

Weeds, Bees and Poison Ivy Part II (Oh My).  The rest of the group got to help me pull bind weed off brambles and to cut down the scrub bushes across the street.  We found that the poison ivy had really taken off over there (which I hear about and have observed from time to time).  The poison ivy was so mature that it had formed berries.  I explained in excrutiating detail   how dangerous the ivy was and how important it was to not touch it.  We hacked away at the weed trees and bushes and ivy.  One of the ladies then found an underground bee hive.  This was the most excitement we’ve had for a while. (I heard no squeals indicating the discovery of a snake this year).    I had explained during orientation that they should not fear the bees because they were too busy collecting pollen to care about any of us.    This proved a great opportunity to prove my point because lots of bees were coming and going from the tunnel and they could not have cared less about the crowd that gathered to observe this.

One of the ladies got the joy of mowing a bit of the Block Watch lawns.  When I arrived shortly after 9 a.m. on Saturday, I found neighbor Greg finishing up the mowing.  What are you doing, I asked.  Don’t you know that I have 30 volunteers coming this morning and we always mow the lawn on such days!  No one had told him.  I told him to stop and we would finish.  And so we did.

When we finished around noon, I assigned two of them the joy of helping with our weekly food pantry harvest.  Emma started with the beans (which take the longest to pick) and Jimmy was assigned the tomatoes and kale.   I had hoped that they would harvest more, but the bus arrived early.  (I guess for them it is better than a couple of years ago when it was extremely hot and the bus was an hour late).

When the bus arrived, I corralled the students over to our sign and badgered them to bring the litter bags with them to put up front as trophies.  We took a few group pictures, put the litter bags in dumpsters, and then they were on their way back to campus.   Everyone came to waive goodbye and we spent another 30 minutes putting everything away.  Then, Sabrina and I finished the food pantry harvest.    Because I didn’t get out until after 2 p.m., it was too late to make it to the food pantry (which closes at 3).  Instead, the 56 pounds of produce went to Faith Mission's Homeless Shelter and then I returned to the SACG to harvest from my own plot and to plant some cilantro.  I finally arrived home around 4:30.  I still ache all over, but I am excited to finally have the fence project underway and to push the Free Little Pantry project a little forward as well.

This week, I get to return all of the tools (to the Rebuilding Together Tool Library which loaned us
hedge clippers to attack the weeds and to Keep Columbus Beautiful -- which also has some yard waste bags for us - which loaned us the litter grabbers).    

Labor Day weekend will be more relaxed than this because our Fall planting has been completed and we’ll be winding down from this point forward (except for completing the fence project).

Want to help?  Anyone who wants to help us complete the fence project only needs to email me at GardenMgr@gmail.com or show up on this or next Wednesday evening or this Saturday morning.    There’s still lots of painting to do (which I am qualified to coordinate).  We will have to schedule in advance with Ken, though, to actually attach the remaining stringers and pickets.