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| Emily stuffed our free little library |
As explained in This
Week, Emily Spector started the Read to Succeed Foundation after
helping her older sister volunteer at an area food pantry. She realized that the pantry clients would
also benefit from more intellectual pursuits and might not have ready access to
a public library and free books. She and her parents stopped by the SACG at
noon on Saturday to fill our free little library with books and leave a few for
me to fill in as needed. She had a lot
of beautiful books, including the ever popular Captain Underpants.
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| Before Emily stuffed our library |
While Emily merely wanted to share her love of
reading (as we at the SACG share our love of gardening), her focus on literacy could save lives every bit as much
as fresh and nutritious food. Studies
have shown that children learn to read until the third grade. After that, they read to learn. Therefore, if a child can’t read by the third
grade, their chance of graduating from high school and getting a job materially
decrease. Their chances for success at
life are so diminished by not being able to read that some
states plan the number of future prison cells in part based on elementary
school literacy proficiency exams. I was
surprised to learn over the summer that one of the largest funders of literacy
studies in the world is the U.S. Department of Justice (through its Bureau of Justice Statistics),
which discovered decades ago that a person’s chance of ending up and returning
to prison is materially affected by the level of education that person obtained
and his or her ability to read. It’s not just a saying: Teach One, Save One.
Emily gave me her card and if any food pantries or community
garden free little libraries are in need of more books (both for adults and
children), just let me know and I will put you in touch with Emily and her
basement full of books. Her project has
been so successful that people keep stopping by her house and dropping off more
books. We’re very grateful for her efforts and
generosity. If this is what she can accomplish
at only twelve years of age, just imagine what else she will achieve as she
gets older.
Pick It Up
Update. As we have in past years,
SACG gardeners picked up litter in our neighborhood last week. I reported last week that four
of us picked up seven bags of litter in 90 minutes along East Main Street,
even though we had focused only on the two blocks (north and south) between
Fairwood and Morrison. After I
published that post, Keep Columbus Beautiful provided us with additional
statistics. For the area of East Main Street
between South Ohio and James Road, 30 bags of litter were picked up by 17
volunteers (including our four). 
We’re in the middle of another middle drought at the
SACG. In the past two weeks, we’ve
received only about a half inch of rain.
This is a little hard on the Fall crops we’re trying to grow. On top of that, snows have come a month early
to the Rockies and upper Midwest. Last
winter came a little early and I think this year will too (La Nina or not). With this in mind, I’ve spent more time than
anticipated on watering. With
nighttime temperatures in the 40’s, I’ve decided to let my remaining tomato plants “go.” I’ve pulled and composted my determinate
plants and pinched the flowers on the remaining plants so that they can focus
their energy on ripening the remaining fruit.
I’m not really watering my SACG tomatoes anymore. (As a practical matter, there aren’t that
many tomatoes left anyway because of our regular produce thefts). I thinned our food pantry turnip crop with
the hope that they will form bulbs despite the lack of rain and thinned my own Chinese
cabbage. I weeded, heavily pruned our
many sunflowers and saved scores of cosmos seeds so that we can have pretty
flowers next year. Next week, I’ll have
to start pulling and composting spent plants out of the food pantry plots. In light of our cool nights (which I love), I pulled the rest of our basil on Saturday. I've made and frozen a year's worth of basil from my plot and took the rest to the food pantry. I had doubts whether it would be taken, but I need not have worried. Half of it was gone before I had time to leave the building. On Wednesday, I was speaking with the leader from Faith Mission's Community Garden (which received Outstanding Community Garden of the Year at the annual Growing to Green dinner). Like us, she also grows herbs to improve the taste of the food served at the homeless shelter. So few gardens donate it that she has dedicated a significant amount of space for them. I always wondered if they would cook with the herbs I've donated and she assured me that they do.
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| Before I started pruning |
Even as our sunflowers are slowly dying back, many of our
cosmos are still in flower and our asters are coming into bloom. Rayna even suggested that I cut back some of
the cosmos to give a fuller view of the asters.
Hmmmm……. I’m going to have to
divide those asters this fall (in case anyone wants some) and I’m thinking
about transplanting a peony bush from my back yard to the SACG. But you know what they say about best laid
plans. . . .
When I made our weekly food pantry donation on Saturday at
the LSS food pantry, I learned that Gene is feeling rather poorly, has been in
the hospital for pneumonia and is scheduled for gall bladder surgery on
Friday. Everyone should say a prayer
for his speedy recovery and maybe drop him a cheerful card. He loves a good joke.
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