Sunday, April 29, 2018

ISO Stolen Bees


Our cherry trees are blooming on time and look almost as spectacular as last year.  One thing, however, is missing: The bees that pollinate them.  Last year I took lots of pictures of bees in our cherry blossoms.  However, there is nary a bee in sight this year.  Boo hoo.  The reason?  Someone dug out and stole our bee hive (which had been in the Block Watch lot across the street under a former garage).     So, even if our blossoms survive two cold nights in a row, it will be for naught without bees.  Sigh.


It’s been a busy week at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.   Phil and Marcel wasted no time in preparing and planting their plots.  Sabrina covered most of her plot of purple nettles with lawn fabric and planted about half of it in with potatoes, beans, greens, lettuce, etc.  Amy, Alyssa, Taylor and Carly have all prepared their plots and partially planted them as well.  Me?  Well, I’ve been busy with capital improvements and visitors.  All I managed to get planted this week were a few leeks, garlic, cold crops, and beets and some collard greens in the neighbor plot.   I was not able to do very much weeding or get any start on the food pantry plots or to start my annual herbs.

On Sunday, I stopped by for about an hour or so to start draining the big tank so that Ken could fix the spicket.   I visited Cathy while I waited, but barely made a dent in the tank.  I’m using a cheap hose from home and it apparently is bent in a few places, which restricts the water flow.  I tried again for a couple of hours on Wednesday, but managed to only get half another 100 gallons or so drained.  Gee whiz.  Even six hours yesterday only got it down to about 200 gallons.   At least we are not creating any more ponds at Kimball Farms.

We had a large crew around on Wednesday.  Amy arrived first to weed and plant in her plot before she returned home for dinner.  Then Sabrina came byt o put lawn fabric on her plot.    The fabric is supposed to deprive the weeds of sunlight, thereby killing them.  I think it would have been cheaper and faster to simply cover it with a cheap black plastic tarp, but that’s me.   Alyssa and Taylor came by to prep and plant some brussells sprouts.   I formally measured and marked off the northern plots with stakes.   I couldn’t, however, find twine to tie from the stakes to the fence.

We had a couple of visitors.  Daniel from Four Seasons City Farm finally stopped by for a tour.  He drives by and waves periodically, but he’s never stopped before.  He was dropping $75 of beautiful strawberry plants off at Kimball Farms (as a fundraisers for FSCF).  He was intrigued by our reluctance to till.  Taylor and Sabrina talked to him about when and why we till and why we generally do not.   (I planted some collards while they discussed this).  He admired the quality of our soil, made some suggestions, observed that our raspberries were planted too close together (which made me laugh), and teased me about our disgruntled neighbor.   He was fascinated that I like to keep weeds in the plots (with some exceptions) until I plant.  (I like to feed the microorganisms in the soil with live roots, etc., particularly chickweed).  He was admiring our flowers and suggested that I divide them (and give some to him). Someone keeps stealing all of FSCF perennial flowers and then stole a whole stack of t-posts that they need for their fence.     I offered to dig up and give him some of our extra early daisies right there on the spot, but he demurred.  He had already started Shasta daisies, but I explained that they have different blooming time.   


I also explained that nearly all of our perennial flowers come from my backyard and I could probably divide some more for FSCF.  In fact, that is how I spent my Thursday evening, potting quite a few coneflowers, as well as some purple bee balm and some white garden phlox, etc.    But then I was too tired to email him.  I also explained that we were planning a fence straightening project on Saturday.  If it went well, I might have some t-posts for them.  (Most of ours were previously donated by Lowe’s, grants, Trudeaus’s, etc.)

Daniel relayed to me that Growing Power had closed six months ago because of its mounting debts, and my hero Will Allen’s operation had failed financially.   His famous book, the Good Food Revolution, was required reading for all OSU freshman just a few years ago.  This did not surprise me (considering all of its operations, staff size and ambitious plans), although it was very disappointing.   When he was here in 2011, Allen had been pretty candid that it was virtually impossible to turn a profit in agriculture.  He had only succeeded because he turned his farm into a non-profit (i.e., tax free), and could accept donations and grants, particularly educational grants to teach young people.   The Growing Power website is still there but no longer has any content.    I grew up in farm country and I don’t know any farmer who doesn’t have a full-time (or almost full-time) job on the side that pays a salary and subsidizes the farm.  My grandfather worked for Columbus Southern power, for instance.  One of my best friends from high school actually commutes to Grove City to work full-time every day to subsidize his farm.  The Wall Street Journal  reported in February that even big commercial farms rent their large trucks out during after the harvest season.   While farming can provide a nice supplemental income, hardly anyone gets rich, let alone breaks even.  It’s very labor intensive and/or expensive to get land, water and equipment.  Only the Amish seemed to be breaking even and they have large families on small plots of land with, obviously no modern equipment.  I think President Trump must finally be getting the message because last night he mentioned that he plans to protect and maybe even expand the farmer guest worker program.  (Nothing in the past two decades has struck me as more absurd and counter productive than to criminalize the folks who plant, pick and process our incredible cheap food for mere pennies per pound).

On Friday, I picked up some lumber and other supplies at Lowe’s.  I needed to cut down the boards from 8 feet to 6 feet, but my circular saw wouldn’t work.  (It turned out not to be the saw, but the ancient extension cord which was faulty).   Luckily, former SACG gardener and long-time neighbor Mike was out in the alley playing with his youngest child and he has a table saw that made quick work of my project.

Saturday, we had a group of 7 Community Service volunteers.  I baked them some blueberry muffins and Amy donated boxes of granola bars to keep them energetic.  Because the Columbus half-marathon had taken over downtown, hey reported directly to the SACG in their own cars.  It was colder than expected and the wind chill didn’t help.  Of course, this is pretty typical April weather, so I was dressed in layers.  Several of the volunteers were not and a couple of them complained about being cold the entire time.  I gave them plenty of sweaty work to generate body heat, but only a couple of them used it to their advantage.  (One smart lady even stripped down to just a t-shirt for a while because there was sufficient work to do to keep warm if you made any effort at all).  Two of them spent most of their time picking up litter in the neighborhood. They hit a few alleys and Main Street down to Berkeley. They explained that a vacant lot down there can now be mowed due to their efforts. 

Two of them painted the lumber I had picked up the day before and finished painting our rain barrel (to match the shed).  Three of them then returned to the wood chip project we had started last week: raking up the wood chip paths and composting the wood chips so that we can narrow our ever-widening paths by a foot or two and, thus, expand the size of each plot by approximately 10 square feet.  As I expected, we ran out of compost bin space, so I asked them to focus only on digging up the edges of the path, straightening the edging and moving the edging in a bit.  

When we have a group of volunteers, I usually have them also mow not only our lot, but also the neighboring Block Watch lots because I know our neighbors – like most of us – could make other use of their spare time if they did not have to mow those lots every week.   However, this week they beat us to it and apparently had already mowed all of them – including ours -- on Friday.  Those slackers.  So, that was one less task for our cold volunteers to do.

After about an hour, I grabbed the strongest looking volunteer to help me straighten our southern fence.  In particular, he dug three post holes so that we could upgrade our fence posts from wood stakes and t-posts to treated 2x4s that had been painted to match our front picket fence.   The first one was not so bad, but the others involved digging out raspberry bushes and a lot more stone debris.  It was a messy and time consuming project.  I don’t think that we’ll be able to return to it until next Fall because the brambles will begin to grow gangbusters as the temperatures rise and will be less and less able to survive being dug up and replanted.  I had hoped to get six posts set, but we only accomplished about half of that.   We also could not dig quite as deeply as we needed to, but it will probably be sufficient.  Then, we added top boards to keep the wire fence straight (as opposed to sagging between posts).  Nonetheless, we then had to saw the tops off of the posts to level them with the fence.   

The northern fence probably sags more, but it does not get as much traffic as the southern fence (which faces Main Street).  In a couple of weeks, the entire fence will be covered in raspberry brambles and no one will notice anything until we cut them back again in the Fall.  If we get some more lumber, we could have it painted over the  summer and then have the project ready to go for our final two or three weeks of the year.

I had told them that we would be turning to weeding and planting a food pantry plot after lunch.  However, the fence project took all of my time.  (While the posts were being dug, I managed to weed and mulch the southeast flower bed).  We also had another visitor who was interested in possibly joining the Garden, so I gave her and her daughter a tour.  One of the ladies made sure to keep busy and then reloaded the shed with all of the tools and implements.   She also watered in the brambles that we had replanted.

Carly and Sabrina were there to tend their plots.  Sabrina planted onions and potatoes, etc. and helped Carly while I was busy with our volunteers.  I released our volunteers at 2, but told them that they did not need to leave because I had more work if they wanted to stay.  They jumped into their cars  and then I turned to my own plot.  However, my post-digger hero (who had two blisters from his work, one of which I had to bandage) returned to ask if I needed more help.  He didn’t want to leave me “high and dry.”  I laughed; I could be here 24-7 and still not catch up on everything.  Run while you still can!  After he left, I weeded one more row in my plot and planted garlic, beets and leeks.  I also watered in my crops, noticed that my lettuce and spinach had germinated and retrieved the hose from the tank before calling it a day.   

I went back to the Garden tonight to make sure that Hillary’s plot was still marked off.  (I forgot to check if the volunteers had moved the stakes where I had marked off the plots.  They had, but had moved them into the plots without me even having to ask.  Good job).  Hillary was there with her boyfriend, Jake, who formerly managed a campus garden in Toronto.  (Could he finally be the replacement Garden Manager I’ve been waiting a decade for?  We shall see).   They were busy digging trenches in her plot.  He explained that they were just going to double dig, but ended up digging out a couple hundred pounds of construction debris that was still in her plot.  They piled it in front of a food pantry plot.  I just laughed and laughed.  I had dug out much more than that in my time.  She was lucky to have Jake there to help her, because I was generally dependent upon the kindness of strangers passing by in the alley.   I’m thinking that we might want to use this new debris to plug the gaps in the chain link fence on the west side of Sabrina’s plot to make sure that the groundhog does not return. The smaller pieces could be used as path edging. We had already obtained a grant in 2015 to haul the prior six years’ of construction debris to a dump and it will be a while before we do that again.   Jake asked about getting some more compost for her plot because he was not as impressed with our soil as most people.  Sigh.  I told them I would be getting more in a few weeks to a month, but they could grab a couple of the bagged soil or go down to Ohio Mulch off Fairwood.

Next weekend, I hope to have had new wood chips delivered.  Our volunteers will be spread new wood chips on our narrower paths, etc.  Hopefully, we will get the rest of the flower beds weeded and mulched.  If not, we have a crew of United Methodist women coming on May 10.  I have announced that they are going to be weeding and planting all of the vacant plots (i.e., our food pantry plots).  So, anyone wanting a plot at the SACG had better arrive by this Saturday to put in their work equity, etc., because we will not have any vacant plots after May 10.   After May 10, will return to automatic pilot and will be focusing on weeding, watering and harvesting, etc. and I will be able to focus on my own plot.

ISO Stolen Bees


Our cherry trees are blooming on time and look almost as spectacular as last year.  One thing, however, is missing: The bees that pollinate them.  Last year I took lots of pictures of bees in our cherry blossoms.  However, there is nary a bee in sight this year.  Boo hoo.  The reason?  Someone dug out and stole our bee hive (which had been in the Block Watch lot across the street under a former garage).     So, even if our blossoms survive two cold nights in a row, it will be for naught without bees.  Sigh.


It’s been a busy week at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.   Phil and Marcel wasted no time in preparing and planting their plots.  Sabrina covered most of her plot of purple nettles with lawn fabric and planted about half of it in with potatoes, beans, greens, lettuce, etc.  Amy, Alyssa, Taylor and Carly have all prepared their plots and partially planted them as well.  Me?  Well, I’ve been busy with capital improvements and visitors.  All I managed to get planted this week were a few leeks, garlic, cold crops, and beets and some collard greens in the neighbor plot.   I was not able to do very much weeding or get any start on the food pantry plots or to start my annual herbs.

On Sunday, I stopped by for about an hour or so to start draining the big tank so that Ken could fix the spicket.   I visited Cathy while I waited, but barely made a dent in the tank.  I’m using a cheap hose from home and it apparently is bent in a few places, which restricts the water flow.  I tried again for a couple of hours on Wednesday, but managed to only get half another 100 gallons or so drained.  Gee whiz.  Even six hours yesterday only got it down to about 200 gallons.   At least we are not creating any more ponds at Kimball Farms.

We had a large crew around on Wednesday.  Amy arrived first to weed and plant in her plot before she returned home for dinner.  Then Sabrina came byt o put lawn fabric on her plot.    The fabric is supposed to deprive the weeds of sunlight, thereby killing them.  I think it would have been cheaper and faster to simply cover it with a cheap black plastic tarp, but that’s me.   Alyssa and Taylor came by to prep and plant some brussells sprouts.   I formally measured and marked off the northern plots with stakes.   I couldn’t, however, find twine to tie from the stakes to the fence.

We had a couple of visitors.  Daniel from Four Seasons City Farm finally stopped by for a tour.  He drives by and waves periodically, but he’s never stopped before.  He was dropping $75 of beautiful strawberry plants off at Kimball Farms (as a fundraisers for FSCF).  He was intrigued by our reluctance to till.  Taylor and Sabrina talked to him about when and why we till and why we generally do not.   (I planted some collards while they discussed this).  He admired the quality of our soil, made some suggestions, observed that our raspberries were planted too close together (which made me laugh), and teased me about our disgruntled neighbor.   He was fascinated that I like to keep weeds in the plots (with some exceptions) until I plant.  (I like to feed the microorganisms in the soil with live roots, etc., particularly chickweed).  He was admiring our flowers and suggested that I divide them (and give some to him). Someone keeps stealing all of FSCF perennial flowers and then stole a whole stack of t-posts that they need for their fence.     I offered to dig up and give him some of our extra early daisies right there on the spot, but he demurred.  He had already started Shasta daisies, but I explained that they have different blooming time.   


I also explained that nearly all of our perennial flowers come from my backyard and I could probably divide some more for FSCF.  In fact, that is how I spent my Thursday evening, potting quite a few coneflowers, as well as some purple bee balm and some white garden phlox, etc.    But then I was too tired to email him.  I also explained that we were planning a fence straightening project on Saturday.  If it went well, I might have some t-posts for them.  (Most of ours were previously donated by Lowe’s, grants, Trudeaus’s, etc.)

Daniel relayed to me that Growing Power had closed six months ago because of its mounting debts, and my hero Will Allen’s operation had failed financially.   His famous book, the Good Food Revolution, was required reading for all OSU freshman just a few years ago.  This did not surprise me (considering all of its operations, staff size and ambitious plans), although it was very disappointing.   When he was here in 2011, Allen had been pretty candid that it was virtually impossible to turn a profit in agriculture.  He had only succeeded because he turned his farm into a non-profit (i.e., tax free), and could accept donations and grants, particularly educational grants to teach young people.   The Growing Power website is still there but no longer has any content.    I grew up in farm country and I don’t know any farmer who doesn’t have a full-time (or almost full-time) job on the side that pays a salary and subsidizes the farm.  My grandfather worked for Columbus Southern power, for instance.  One of my best friends from high school actually commutes to Grove City to work full-time every day to subsidize his farm.  The Wall Street Journal  reported in February that even big commercial farms rent their large trucks out during after the harvest season.   While farming can provide a nice supplemental income, hardly anyone gets rich, let alone breaks even.  It’s very labor intensive and/or expensive to get land, water and equipment.  Only the Amish seemed to be breaking even and they have large families on small plots of land with, obviously no modern equipment.  I think President Trump must finally be getting the message because last night he mentioned that he plans to protect and maybe even expand the farmer guest worker program.  (Nothing in the past two decades has struck me as more absurd and counter productive than to criminalize the folks who plant, pick and process our incredible cheap food for mere pennies per pound).

On Friday, I picked up some lumber and other supplies at Lowe’s.  I needed to cut down the boards from 8 feet to 6 feet, but my circular saw wouldn’t work.  (It turned out not to be the saw, but the ancient extension cord which was faulty).   Luckily, former SACG gardener and long-time neighbor Mike was out in the alley playing with his youngest child and he has a table saw that made quick work of my project.

Saturday, we had a group of 7 Community Service volunteers.  I baked them some blueberry muffins and Amy donated boxes of granola bars to keep them energetic.  Because the Columbus half-marathon had taken over downtown, hey reported directly to the SACG in their own cars.  It was colder than expected and the wind chill didn’t help.  Of course, this is pretty typical April weather, so I was dressed in layers.  Several of the volunteers were not and a couple of them complained about being cold the entire time.  I gave them plenty of sweaty work to generate body heat, but only a couple of them used it to their advantage.  (One smart lady even stripped down to just a t-shirt for a while because there was sufficient work to do to keep warm if you made any effort at all).  Two of them spent most of their time picking up litter in the neighborhood. They hit a few alleys and Main Street down to Berkeley. They explained that a vacant lot down there can now be mowed due to their efforts. 

Two of them painted the lumber I had picked up the day before and finished painting our rain barrel (to match the shed).  Three of them then returned to the wood chip project we had started last week: raking up the wood chip paths and composting the wood chips so that we can narrow our ever-widening paths by a foot or two and, thus, expand the size of each plot by approximately 10 square feet.  As I expected, we ran out of compost bin space, so I asked them to focus only on digging up the edges of the path, straightening the edging and moving the edging in a bit.  

When we have a group of volunteers, I usually have them also mow not only our lot, but also the neighboring Block Watch lots because I know our neighbors – like most of us – could make other use of their spare time if they did not have to mow those lots every week.   However, this week they beat us to it and apparently had already mowed all of them – including ours -- on Friday.  Those slackers.  So, that was one less task for our cold volunteers to do.

After about an hour, I grabbed the strongest looking volunteer to help me straighten our southern fence.  In particular, he dug three post holes so that we could upgrade our fence posts from wood stakes and t-posts to treated 2x4s that had been painted to match our front picket fence.   The first one was not so bad, but the others involved digging out raspberry bushes and a lot more stone debris.  It was a messy and time consuming project.  I don’t think that we’ll be able to return to it until next Fall because the brambles will begin to grow gangbusters as the temperatures rise and will be less and less able to survive being dug up and replanted.  I had hoped to get six posts set, but we only accomplished about half of that.   We also could not dig quite as deeply as we needed to, but it will probably be sufficient.  Then, we added top boards to keep the wire fence straight (as opposed to sagging between posts).  Nonetheless, we then had to saw the tops off of the posts to level them with the fence.   

The northern fence probably sags more, but it does not get as much traffic as the southern fence (which faces Main Street).  In a couple of weeks, the entire fence will be covered in raspberry brambles and no one will notice anything until we cut them back again in the Fall.  If we get some more lumber, we could have it painted over the  summer and then have the project ready to go for our final two or three weeks of the year.

I had told them that we would be turning to weeding and planting a food pantry plot after lunch.  However, the fence project took all of my time.  (While the posts were being dug, I managed to weed and mulch the southeast flower bed).  We also had another visitor who was interested in possibly joining the Garden, so I gave her and her daughter a tour.  One of the ladies made sure to keep busy and then reloaded the shed with all of the tools and implements.   She also watered in the brambles that we had replanted.

Carly and Sabrina were there to tend their plots.  Sabrina planted onions and potatoes, etc. and helped Carly while I was busy with our volunteers.  I released our volunteers at 2, but told them that they did not need to leave because I had more work if they wanted to stay.  They jumped into their cars  and then I turned to my own plot.  However, my post-digger hero (who had two blisters from his work, one of which I had to bandage) returned to ask if I needed more help.  He didn’t want to leave me “high and dry.”  I laughed; I could be here 24-7 and still not catch up on everything.  Run while you still can!  After he left, I weeded one more row in my plot and planted garlic, beets and leeks.  I also watered in my crops, noticed that my lettuce and spinach had germinated and retrieved the hose from the tank before calling it a day.   

I went back to the Garden tonight to make sure that Hillary’s plot was still marked off.  (I forgot to check if the volunteers had moved the stakes where I had marked off the plots.  They had, but had moved them into the plots without me even having to ask.  Good job).  Hillary was there with her boyfriend, Jake, who formerly managed a campus garden in Toronto.  (Could he finally be the replacement Garden Manager I’ve been waiting a decade for?  We shall see).   They were busy digging trenches in her plot.  He explained that they were just going to double dig, but ended up digging out a couple hundred pounds of construction debris that was still in her plot.  They piled it in front of a food pantry plot.  I just laughed and laughed.  I had dug out much more than that in my time.  She was lucky to have Jake there to help her, because I was generally dependent upon the kindness of strangers passing by in the alley.   I’m thinking that we might want to use this new debris to plug the gaps in the chain link fence on the west side of Sabrina’s plot to make sure that the groundhog does not return. The smaller pieces could be used as path edging. We had already obtained a grant in 2015 to haul the prior six years’ of construction debris to a dump and it will be a while before we do that again.   Jake asked about getting some more compost for her plot because he was not as impressed with our soil as most people.  Sigh.  I told them I would be getting more in a few weeks to a month, but they could grab a couple of the bagged soil or go down to Ohio Mulch off Fairwood.

Next weekend, I hope to have had new wood chips delivered.  Our volunteers will be spread new wood chips on our narrower paths, etc.  Hopefully, we will get the rest of the flower beds weeded and mulched.  If not, we have a crew of United Methodist women coming on May 10.  I have announced that they are going to be weeding and planting all of the vacant plots (i.e., our food pantry plots).  So, anyone wanting a plot at the SACG had better arrive by this Saturday to put in their work equity, etc., because we will not have any vacant plots after May 10.   After May 10, will return to automatic pilot and will be focusing on weeding, watering and harvesting, etc. and I will be able to focus on my own plot.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Snakes on a Plane or Field of Nettles


 For our back-up Earth Day work day, we found even more snakes and had more people at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden on Saturday than we did last week for our Earth Day Celebration or for our Opening Day.  Of course, we accomplished loads of work and started on some beautification and capital improvement projects.  The gardeners who finished their work equity (i.e., 3 hours of back-breaking labor) last week or today also started on preparing their plots for Spring planting.  I beat them there, having already planted a row of spinach and lettuce, onions and peas.  I added kale, cabbage, broccoli and brussells sprouts today.  Rumor has it that our long winter is finally over.  I am hoping that we get at least some Spring before jumping into Summer. 

Amy and I were at the SACG alone on Wednesday evening.  She started where Rayna had left off weeding our strawberry patch.     The weeds are so well entrenched (since it was neglected last year by the gardeners who had been assigned to water and weed it) that virtually everything had to be dug out and the berries replanted.   It seems to be going well enough that Mike Hogan, OSU Extension Agent, who stopped by on Friday complimented the work.    Carly came to put in her work equity today and I started her off by watering all of the strawberries.  We had enough strawberries to put in a raised bed so that I can repot them next week to either sell or give away to another community garden.  And, Hilary’s last work equity task of the day was to take some of our extra berries and plant them in the strawberry pot by the shed.  While Amy weeded, I weeded another two rows in my plot, moved a trellis and planted a row of snow peas and a half row of potatoes.  I also tried out our new compost thermometer, but it said that our compost bin was on 45 degrees.  I was worried that it was broken, so I took it home and ran it under some hot water.  It works fine; our compost, however, is not composting.  It needs a nitrogen fix.

On Friday, I met Ava from the Greater South East Communities United Garden at Gethsemane UMC and I got together and drove over to Trudeau’s Fence to pick up some scrap cedar which Trudeau's was generously donating.  Trudeaus has been a generous supporter of the SACG since prior to our breaking ground in 2009.  They not only donate the cedar, they load it for us and helped Ava with a few other pieces, too.    Ava has volunteer union carpenters  coming next weekend to build her two gates for their community garden.  I want to improve and straighten our southern fence to look more like the amazing fence around the new north Bexley Community Garden.   I teased Ava because she was running around a lot for her garden on Friday, had rented a U-Haul moving van and had lots of supplies.  Those trucks are exhausting to drive.
This morning, one of my cats caught a mouse in my kitchen (hiding under the bookshelf holding my cookbooks).  She dropped it, though, when I put my foot out to keep her from taking it into my office and to redirect her to through the back door to my patio.   I was upset that I couldn’t stay to help her re-catch it because I needed to hustle over to the Garden to meet another volunteer group.  Sadly, the dead mouse was not waiting for me when I returned at 3 this afternoon.  I have to start thinking about laying some trarps. . . . 
Amy came to finish weeding the strawberry patch and then moved on to some of our southern flower beds.  She also brought warm blueberry muffins.  Yum.    I finally put her off to start tending her plot.   She found another snake while she was weeding under the brick paths and brought it into the Garden for us to see.  Zion went nuts and started carrying it around the Garden. I had to take it from him and set it free near the fence line so that it could find a new place to hibernate.

Phil came to finish his work equity.  I had him fill in thin places along the exterior fence where we had aggressively pruned raspberries last week and to pull more gooseweed/cleavers and ragweed from the fence line while we still can.  He also edged and mulched one of our cherry trees and then weeded and mulched around the sign.  We then picked a plot for him and he aggressively weeded and prepared the soil in his plot.  It looked amazing.  That particular plot has 
not gotten a lot of love over the last decade so I had him work in about a cubic yard of compost that the OSU students had liberated from our compost bins on our Opening Day.  He plans to start planting tomorrow.

Sabrina came with her youngest, Finn, to start tending her plot.   (Zephyr had an overnight boy scout camping trip).  She weeded and hoed away.  Her plot was our three sisters plot last year (with corn, squash and beans).  When we returned in 2018, it was a field of purple nettles.   We are mystified.  Mike said that nettles will take over any disturbed ground, but makes good compost.  Sabrina has also discovered that it is edible and used in ointments.   While she was weeding around and under the landscaping fabric that Rayna left behind when it was her plot, she discovered several snakes that had been hibernating there.  Sabrina HATES snakes.   I have to remind everyone that they eat bugs. Good snakes. 
Marcel came with her two boys and aggressively weeded her plot.  Boys LOVE to dig and Zion is no exception.  He also loves to run around and yell.  At this time of year, he cannot do much harm because very little is in the ground.    He found a baseball and I told him that he could keep it.  So, he played baseball with an imaginary team and occasionally catch and batting swings with Taylor.  Marcel got her onions planted before they departed. Alyssa and Taylor came to weed some more and plant onions and lettuce.
Our community volunteers were a group of OSU students.    We accomplished a lot.  As always, there was a lot of mowing to be done.   I discovered, however, when showing one of them around that someone dug up the bee hive that had been across the street from us.  Who would do such a thing?!!!  One of the ladies varnished our signs.  A gentleman painted most of the rain barrel.  (The paint I had picked up did not match the paint from last week, so I made sure that they did not throw this can away so that I can buy the matching shade this week and get the job finished and maybe also paint the compost bin to match.   One lady took my special dandelion tool to dig up dandelions in our lot and next door.  Two of them started painting the boards that I had picked up on Friday.  Two of them dig a great job weeding the southern fence line and area just south of the Garden.  Carly and Hilary also weeded under the benches and raised beds and in that area. Carly also watered in our newly planted flower pots and strawberries.   All of them started digging up our wood chip paths (which now are about a foot taller than the soil in the plots) and moving them to our two empty compost bins.    They also weeded a flower bed and watered our new trees and elderberry bushes.  Leigh Anne stopped by to take photos and give me some tips on where I could find inexpensive peach trees on sale.  While they did this, I planted and watered in some pansies into our flower pots and vegetables into our neighbor bed and answered questions from the gardeners.   Then, we all emptied and repacked the shed.

Our neighbors at Kimball Farms were also very busy this morning.   They weeded all of their beds (and in between) and filled them with new soil and surrounded them with mulch.   Near the end of the day, Taylor came to tell me that the spicket on our big tank was malfunctioning and had fallen out (spraying water everywhere and making a small pond at Kimball Farms).  Sh*t!   I asked the gardeners to not use it again until I had emptied it with a hose (to create a temporary pond next door near our flower bed) and Ken glued it back the spicket back in securely.   

It is always something.

Next week, we will work some more on clearing out the wood chips and spreading mulch donated by Ava and Keep Columbus Beautiful.   We’ll also top off the raised beds, etc. and work a bit on the southern fence before we are prevented from doing so by the growing raspberry crop.  We also have a lot of strawberry and raspberry plants to pot and sell.    I hope to also plant some leeks and garlic and to start planting greens in a food pantry plot.