Scrambling to Keep Warm on SACG’s Closing Day

This may not have been the coldest Veteran’s Day in history, but it was the coldest Closing Day for the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  It was 22 degrees when we started working this morning.    However, it was sunny and there was no wind, so it was not as bad as it could have been.  And, let’s face it, it’s easier to clean up the Garden when the plants have died back than when they are thriving.   Nonetheless, we were moving a lot to keep warm and that helped us get our work done in pretty short order.  And, of course, it being Veterans Day, we had the help of two veterans:  Bob Seed and Ken Turner.

As faithful readers know, we accomplished most of our Closing Day tasks last Saturday when Alyssa, Taylor, Carly, Sabrina, Bob, Rose and I cut back and bagged the brambles, mowed the lawn, and cleaned out some of the plots.  I worried that no one (other than Sabrina) would show up this morning because it was so cold.   I had stopped by on Thursday to rescue the lettuce and chard because I did not think that they would survive the freezing temperatures.  Amy was already there when I arrived this morning and had brought some homemade pumpkin nut bread.  Yum!  I brought hot coffee (and discovered to my chagrin that my Bailey’s Irish cream had expired 10 years ago and so I couldn’t supply that extra hazard pay for my faithful volunteers this morning). Sabrina showed up when I did and Rachel was only a few minutes behind.  Then, Bob Seed came back and brought hot chocolate.  Cathy dropped off another few dozen of her homemade chocolate chip cookies and then we got lucky when Casey and two of his fellow OSU student volunteers showed up to help.

Amy started on cutting back in the flower beds. She was joined by Bob and Rachel.  I attacked the Butterfly Bush and emptied the rain barrel.    Sabrina was tasked with cleaning and reorganizing the area around the shed and the shed itself.  She excels at this.  She pulled out all of the stakes, sorted out the rotten ones, organized everything and then put it in its place.    She then emptied the shed, swept it out and then put everything back in a very strange order, but it all fit.

After cleaning out the flower beds, Amy and Rachel  dug out and bagged the forest of chocolate mint that had taken over the center of the Garden.  They were then joined by Bob and were tasked with cleaning out the remaining food pantry plots and deciding what was still edible (and thus donatable) and what would be bagged or composted.     Our carrots were not mature enough (and the soil in the raised beds was frozen solid, so that I could not pull out those carrots).  We weren’t sure when we arrived and everything had a layer of frost on it whether anything would be edible, but most of the crops were cold hardy.  

Casey wanted to turn our compost bins (because that was our most physically demanding task du jour and could be counted on to help him generate body heat).  I worried about him being over there by himself, but when I checked on him, he had found lots of compost and had managed to turn all four bins.   His friends were assigned the three sisters plot to clean out.   I pitched in on various teams and even took a garden fork down to the bins, but no one seemed to really need me today.

Ken showed up to pick up our lawn mower because his assigned task was to clean and winterize it.  He had already been to a Veterans Day breakfast and was off to another event, so he took our mower with him to clean at home before bringing it back (emptied of gas).   Bob agreed to drop the OSU volunteers back at campus (to save them an hour-long bus trip) even though it would mean facing game-day traffic (since we have a noon kickoff).

We have two Volunteers of the Year:  Sabrina and Ken.  Ken took on some of our biggest projects and Sabrina helped out at least half of the weekends (and with a few of our group volunteer days).   This is Sabrina’s second year as a Volunteer of the Year.

Despite this being our coldest Closing Day, I think it’s one of the first when we accomplished everything on our to-do list.  And, unlike last year when we finished an hour late (i.e., around 1 p.m.), we finished on time (early actually).    Cathy stopped by a second time as we were packing up to volunteer to take all of our lawn waste bags to the curb on Monday night/Tuesday morning.  (It made me remember the time that she and I had to carry two dozen lawn waste bags to the curb in two feet of snow a few years ago).    However, it means that I do not have to return on Monday. Yipee!

Sabrina and I had lunch where I had made black bean soup and a butternut squash and roasted poblano pepper quesadillas.  We wondered what we are going to do on Saturdays for the next few months.   (I know I have a lot of house cleaning, organizing and purging to do).   We also took all of the produce to the LSS food pantry for our final weekly donation.   We were at 750 pounds for the year, a record for the SACG.