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.