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).
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.

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.
No comments:
Post a Comment