Look What You Made Me Do

Whew!  We finally finished our fence project this morning.  (Ok, we still have some painting to do next week, but the fence is up and the posts are on).  And I’m finally eating dinner at close to 9 p.m.   Last week, we still had about five feet of pickets to attach and the post toppers to install.  The Capital University student volunteers left us with 40 some painted pickets and we now have 22 painted pickets leftover.  (We also have 10 unpainted pickets to return). I figured that I could finish it this morning, but Ken insisted on doing ALL of the work himself.   All he would let me do is carry extra pickets back to the shed.   He even insisted on using his own liquid nails, instead of the stuff I bought this week.

Last year, a Bexley philanthropist decided to donate her garden trellis to an area community garden.   Cathy helped me to pick it up from the church formerly known as the East Broad Baptist Church (where it had been temporarily stored).   Then, a volunteer group installed the trellis on an extremely hot day in early July.  It looked out of place with our wire fence.  So, when the City announced that area Land Bank community gardens would get $200 vouchers at Lowe’s this Spring, I suggested that we install a fence to go with our new trellis.  Problem is, it costs a lot more than $200 to install a fence (even if we did it ourselves).  Doug, who manages the Silver Drive Lowe’s Home Improvement Store, even gave a substantial discount on the additional materials that we had to buy (including the paint needed to ensure that the paint matched the trellis).   Still, the SACG had to dig into its extremely limited savings (and the tight pockets of several Board members) to purchase all of the materials.   Our only real revenue are the $10/plot fees (and we only had 8 gardeners this year).

The City wanted us to install the fence sooner than later, but we didn’t get a large volunteer group until the end of August (when the OSU Pay-It-Forward volunteers supervised by Ken) helped get most of the stringers up and about 1/3 of the pickets painted and attached.  Then, last week the Capital student volunteers got most of the rest of the fence completed.  Ken completed it this morning.

So, if you want to help subsidize our future efforts to improve the SACG and our neighborhood,

remember us during The Big Give (through the Columbus Foundation), designate us as your charity of choice at Krogers (so that a portion of every purchase you make with your Kroger card will go to the SACG) or designate us as your charity of choice through Smile.Amazon.Com.  We would particularly like to expand our fruit orchard.

I was surprisingly the first to arrive at the SACG this morning.  Sabrina had told me that she would get there at 8 a.m. and Ken said he would get their at 9.  I beat them both.   A gentleman stopped by and tried to convince me to hire him to build a greenhouse for the SACG.  No thanks.  The federal government (through Mid-Ohio Food Bank) bought almost all of the area community gardens a hoop house, but I declined because I want my winters off.    I appreciated his initiative, though.  He liked our free little library, took a copy of The Kite Runner and said he would bring more books back.  Then, he wanted tomatoes from our neighbor plot, but said he couldn’t find any.  That blew my mind because I had been a little frustrated this year that no one seemed to be taking food from our neighbor beds (since the lettuce and onions in the Spring).  However, he was correct.  They had been harvested, so I grabbed a bunch from our food pantry plots and walked them out to him.

Later, some young men walked by and I tried to recruit them to help me finish the fence.  They had “somewhere” to go.  Ok.  Maybe later.

When I got home last week, I heard from one of our OSU student volunteers.  Casey wanted to come back and bring some friends.  Well, his friends wanted to sleep in this morning, but he spent an hour on a COTA bus to return to the SACG this morning.  He helped Sabrina break down the corn stalks.  Then, I had him clean up the food pantry plots (by composting the leaves we had pulled off in past weeks because of insect damage), prune out the bush green beans (which were well watered by our volunteers the prior week and had lots of large beans) and harvest the beans for our weekly food pantry harvest.  Then, sent him hunting for green beans in the corn plot (where we had them growing up the corn stalks).   Then, he mowed our lawn (since Taylor didn’t show up to do his chore or harvest his hundreds of ripe cherry tomatoes).

While I was harvesting for our weekly food pantry harvest, some folks stopped by to harvest everything they could grab from the neighbor beds.  It was funny to listen to them.   We then chatted a bit.  They thought that we were part of Pastor Brown’s ministry.  Nope.  We talked about the hoop house that Kimball Farms just put up (via MOFB).   Apparently, that is just one of four that he has put up.  They did a really good job of installing it.  Even Ken was impressed.  I told them about how to grow cherry tomatoes in hoop houses (which I learned from my cousin’s son, an AG major at Wilmington College).

Amy came and helped with the food pantry harvest.  She also drove Casey back to OSU so that he
wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his day waiting for COTA and then getting back to campus.  Casey says that he’s coming back next week, but I almost feel obliged to tell him about community gardens that are closer to campus so that he doesn’t have to spend 2+ hours every Saturday on COTA just to volunteer at the SACG.

Without any rain this month, it takes a long time to water the Garden.  Our big tank is running dry and I’m afraid to use our tall tank because it is under a black walnut tree that is dropping a lot of bombs this time of the year.   I’ve started looking into buying a hard hat.  No joke.   The bigger issue is that the lack of rain has let the bugs go wild on our greens.  If it’s not aphids, it’s the harlequin beetles that are eating our cabbage, kale and collards.  Sigh.    I’m going to have to invest in some insecticidal soap to deal with this next week.  Luckily, a farm had donated a ton of greens to the food pantry before I got there, so they didn’t need our holey greens this.  (I suggested that they pitch two of the bags).