Earth Day is
not until near the end of the month, but the Easter holiday next week seems to
have motivated Earth Day Columbus to move up the work days and
festivities. Accordingly, the Stoddart
Avenue Community Garden – like many other area community gardens – celebrated Earth
Day yesterday. The day started off with
a freeze warning and seemed to have scared off most of our regular gardeners and
Board members, but we achieved most of our goals nonetheless with help from
some new neighbors, Amy, Rayna and Earth Day Columbus.
We’ve missed
Robert Seed from Keep Columbus Beautiful who has always kept supply
distribution very organized and highly communicative. With his medical leave of absence following
the brutal attack on him in February, the remaining volunteers have been scrambling. I
picked up our supplies on Friday morning and heard that he was planning to stop by KCB around noon to wish them well. (That's great news, isn't it).
While we received all of the mulch (donated by Kurz Brothers) that we
had requested, we only received a few litter grabbers, 3 lawn waste bags and
one safety vest (which I declined).
There were no bus passes this year (which I generally use throughout the
year for volunteers and to assist some of our economically challenged
neighbors). But, we got a bag of luna
bars (for our volunteers and to occasionally pass off to hungry neighbors) and
free Jeni’s ice cream.
I arrived bright
and early at the SACG on Saturday. Unlike
last week, we had brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies. At least our pictures would be better! Alexi quickly arrived with his garden
agreement and plot fee and I immediately put him to work unloading our mulch. He then moved on to edge the front flower
bed and reconstruct the edging along the strawberry patch.
Then, neighbor Cameron arrived and was willing
to do anything. Dirtier the better he
said, so I put him to work flipping compost from one bin into our new western
bin. He was such a good and willing
worker that I tried to recruit him for the Garden, but he’s apparently moving
to Brazil in six weeks to work on an organic commercial farm. (What a sense of adventure!). He then mowed our lawn and the large Block
Watch lot and then weeded the kids’ beds and one food pantry plot before calling it a day. 
I removed and bagged the brambles from the
other compost bins, pruned our fruit trees, transplanted a peony bush and pruned some spent perennial
flowers in the beds. Despite the prior
night’s freeze, our fruit trees seemed unfazed.
The peach blossoms were still blooming and the cherry blossoms were
starting to appear. I then started
planting cold crop seedlings (kale, collards, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage and
brussels sprouts) in our neighbor plot
along the alley and watering in the new transplants. I also had to again clean out our Free Little Library because someone keeps putting perishable produce in there! Ugh. Today, it was cucumbers and apples.
Danielle
(from Earth Day Columbus) stopped by with her husband David to pass out free
Chipotle gift certificates for our volunteers.
They then returned and helped us out a lot. First, they planted two grape vines for us
along our new trellis. Then, they transplanted a poorly placed hosta, dug out a weed tree growing in the fence line and spread
mulch in our flower beds.
(This is one of my least favorite jobs because the mulch sticks to my
clothes and runs up my arms. A few years
ago, my legs and feet were attacked by ants that had been living in the
bag. Ouch!).
Amy arrived
and I put her to work cleaning up our herb garden. The chives and oregano really take over. She expressed interest in the cherry branches I had pruned. What a good idea, so I took the branches that
she did not want. We have so many chives
(and they are so pretty with their purple flowers when in bloom), and she could
not bring herself to dig out more than one bunch. She put them in a flower pot in the hope that
someone would take them home. She also
helped Alexi with the flower bed.
As seems to
happen every year, Alexi, Danielle and David left before I remembered to pass
out the volunteer rewards (other than luna bars). I know that I’ll see Alexi again soon, but
I wasn’t so sure about Danielle and David.
I finally remembered them as Amy packed up to leave.
I wanted
Cameron to remember Columbus while he is in Brazil, so I gave him our extra
Earth Day Columbus t-shirt to wear and advertise our event on another
continent.
Rayna and
her niece Sarah then arrived to volunteer.
Sara weeded the strawberry patch and liberated a few for the garden at
Stewart Avenue Middle School where Rayna works and helps her class raise
food. I had Rayna spread mulch in the herb garden and plant cold crop
seedlings that I had brought in our food pantry plot. I finally got around to planting another two
rows of cold crop seedlings in my plot.
Later in the afternoon, I drove down to Dill’s Greenhouse to purchase
some onion sets. Once I put in a couple
of rows, I’ll share the remainder with the food pantry and neighbor beds and
then with the other gardeners.
In the small
world category, Alexi lives a few houses down from the Garden and moved into
the neighborhood within the last couple of months. However, his partner, Isaiah, had visited the
SACG a few years ago when, as an employee of Whole Foods, he gave us a cooking
demonstration during our 2014 Opening Day and motivated all of us to plant lots of garlic by telling us
about all of the garlic he grew for himself in his backyard. Now,
he’s one of our gardeners.
I’m trying
to convince David and Danielle to return.
They cannot grow anything in their condo . . . . . .
We were not the only ones in the neighborhood who were busy. J. Jireh had a crew picking up litter along East Main Street.
There are always a few more tasks to be addressed, and so these are some of the tasks which will still need to be addressed this month:
1) Maybe extending the alley curb in front of the western
compost bin
2) Picking up litter in the entire neighborhood and
alleys
3) Straightening up our leaning benches of pisa. (or at least lifting them out of the wood chips because the seat is only six inches above the ground at present)
4) Touching up the paint on the shed’s rain barrel
5) Transplanting some volunteer raspberry bushes to empty
spots
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