And So It Goes

What a week.  It has not rained much in 10 days.   We had a great crew of CS volunteers who moved mountains in time for the OTENA Tour on Sunday.   I have already canned some tomatillo salsas and beans and will start canning tomatoes and pickles this week.  We’re already saving seeds and I’ve started some trays of lettuce and beets for our Fall season.   We’ll take a slight breath before preparing for out next big project:  a water line.

The ground is so dry where we have not watered that deep cracks are forming in the crust.  Some of melons are collapsing.  Of course, when it is super hot like it was last week, fruiting plants (like tomatoes and peppers) drop their flowers (and thus, don’t fruit).  We will have to encourage more flowering to get more fruit.  I sometimes cheat with Miracle Gro’s Bloom Buster.  It works with flowers (which is how I got our flowers and roses to look so spectacular for the OTENA Tour).  Desperate times for call for desperate measures.  It has been so dry for so long that our tanks ran dry over the weekend.  I was freaked, but que sera sera. We received a wee bit of rain on Tuesday and it was enough to fill 2/3 of the big tank.  That’s enough to get us to Friday, when we are supposed to get almost an  inch (followed by ¾ inch on Saturday).  When we have a long, hot spell like last week, the skins of our tomatoes also thicken, making them susceptible to splitting skins when followed with a heavy rain, like is expected this weekend.   Uneven watering can also contribute to blossom-end rot.

On Saturday, Leigh Anne sent me a fantastic crew of big strong guys to help us get ready for the OTENA Tour on another 90 degree plus day.   In four hours, two of the guys picked up all of the litter in the square between East Main and Bryden and Morrison and Fairwood, including all of the alleys in between.  OTENA sent a crew – including Keep Columbus Beautiful’s Robert Seed who stopped by to borrow the Carter's litter grabber – to pick up the litter on the Tour route, but our crew had already cleaned up Fairwod and East Main Street.   It was a good thing, too, because Sunday’s tourists did not stick to the tour route and used the alleys instead as a shortcut because it was so hot.  They picked up 6 bags.  

One of the guys mowed our lawn, the orchard lawn, borrowed Frank’s weed wacker to slay the weeds on the Block Watch lot and around one of our raised beds and put mulch around our newer fruit trees.  Two of the guys played tetris with patio pavers donated by Ken’s Bexley neighbors, Rick & Connie, to lay a patio platform for our picnic table and for the Block Watch’s bench across the street and then they spread com-til in the co-op plot and in Carly’s plot.    Because it was again over 90 degrees and extremely humid, Cathy again came by with ice water, popsickles and ice cream sandwiches.  It was much appreciated and, for them, unexpected.  One of our volunteers is a Kenyan native and one of our newer Stoddart neighbors and OTENA visitors was too.  This continues our very cosmopolitan year at the SACG because we have also had volunteers from North and South Korea and Albania. 

Amy and Sabrina arrived early to help spruce up the Garden as well.  They both weeded and pruned quite a bit.  We ran out of water on Friday night (so Carly told me) and so Sabrina and I brought buckets of water.  Sadly, I hit my brakes one my way and about five gallons gushed onto my car floor and in the trunk.  It still smells.  Sigh.    When I told the rest of the gardeners on Tuesday that we had received enough rain to get us through until Friday, Ken reminded me that he could have replaced the big tank spicket (which is leaking) if I had told him earlier that it had been empty.  Duh!  I should have thought of that.    I was a bit distracted. 

Barb and Frank worked really hard as well sprucing up the Block Watch lot across the street. They were wearing long sleeves in 90+ degree heat because of the poison ivy that grows in that area. 

There was a miracle of sorts on Stoddart Avenue when I arrived on Saturday.  As you know, we have a number of vacant lots on Stoddart, although not as many as we used to have.  Vacant lots typically mean shoulder-high grass. A few of our neighbors, including Urban Connections and Andy Buss, mow some of the vacant lots in order to improve the appearance and safety of the neighborhood.  On Saturday, every single vacant lot had been mowed.  There was nothing but short grass up and down Stoddart Avenue.  It was a miracle (and reflected an enormous amount of work).  A bunch of people cared enough to clean up the neighborhood before the OTENA tour because they knew several hundred visitors would be travelling up and down the street.  

For the pre-tour on Saturday evening (with the OTENA Board and homeowners), it was scorching hot with brutal sunshine.  The first three stops were along the Conservatory and then it was a several block hike to Fairwood.  At that point, only me, a couple homeowners and the OTNEA Board walked the block to the SACG.  The rest skipped us and went to the next stop (which, was air conditioned).  They had spent the day cleaning up their homes and yards and were too tired to stop.  Sigh.   But, OTENA gave us a nice gift basket, which I shared with the volunteers the next day.  

When Sunday arrived, I brought more buckets of water over to refresh the flowers (which were wilting in the heat).  I also set up a table for refreshments (pink lemonade) and literature about the SACG and opportunities to volunteer or register for a plot.  It was hot and humid, but very cloudy (which made it more bearable than Saturday).   Cathy made the very best mint iced tea ever.  She brought it over just before 3 (along with a gallon thermos of ice water)  and it was extremely refreshing.  I pushed it to the visitors (who would roll their eyes).  But as soon as they tasted it, their eyes would widen because they realized that I was NOT overselling how good that tea was.  Everyone was asking for the recipe, but I did not know.  Cathy tells me that when she pours the hot water over the tea bags and sugar, she also added a few branches of mint from the SACG and let it steep with the tea for no more than 10 minutes (or it becomes bitter).    She also created and posted some very cute signs reminding our visitors to stay on the wood chip path, because they always seem to wonder into Alyssa's plot to get a closer look at her massive sunflower.

I also brought the extremely cute tri-fold board that Rayna made for us in 2010 which happily showed what the SACG looked like before we broke ground and in our very early years, before the trellis and picket fence, etc.  As I drove up with it, Ms. Jeannie was coming back from church down the alley all dressed up.  I stopped her and showed her the poster and photos of her from our first two years breaking ground, spreading compost and wood chips and picking strawberries with her granddaughter. 

Unlike Saturday, there was a shuttle bus on Sunday to ferry folks from Franklin Park South to Fairwood and then to the next stop on Bryden.  Thing is; the shuttle skipped the SACG altogether.  So, lots of hot people who were on foot skipped visiting the SACG in order to take the shuttle.  They drove by and we waved as they passed.   However, other people continued to stop by on foot, by car and by bicycle.  They came from all directions (because some people decided to take the tour in reverse order).  We had between 100 and 150 visitors, which is a lot for us.  Some people took self-tours, others got the nickel tour (inside the fence) and some got the quarter tour which included the orchard and north side.    Lush was the word of the day because pretty much everything was growing and blooming (including our sunflowers and white garden phlox -- which all started blooming on Sunday morning – another miracle).   Even our corn had started to form husks – just to show off.

We continued to have visitors even after the OTENA tour concluded. We also had a few neighbors stop by to ask how it went and some to ask why all these people were walking up and down the street reading pamphlets.   Cathy came back to help us back up (and to retrieve her thermoses).  Luckily, she arrived late enough for me to dump my lemonade on top of the bare spot and to pour some of her leftover tea into my thermos to take home.  Sabrina then invited me to a cookout at her home.  By the time I arrived home and unpacked everything, it was 9 p.m.

We watered quite a bit on Wednesday and harvested quite a bit, too.  This week, Strader's Garden Centers made three large donations to GCGC to benefit local community gardens.  Two of them were yesterday at the Godman Guild.  It was geranimumpalooza, but there were also coleus and tomatoes and begonias, etc.

This weekend, weather permitting, we will start emptying the northern compost bin and moving/narrowing it to make room for a ford pit for the water meter that will be installed there on July 29.  If the weather does not permit this, we will do it next weekend when we will also be digging out brambles, cutting the fence where the equipment will be entering and then tying it up.  The City came by this week to again mark where our water tap is located and to test whether it still works.  We will also be cutting back 5 feet of brambles on both sides of the north fence to make room for the line zipping equipment to get into the Garden and install pipes from the meter to two hydrants.   By then, we will have harvested the rest of the beets that we planted on May 17 and turnips.  The first weekend in August, we will have a 100 sf plot available (with lots of com-til in it) if anyone wants it.  But if no one jumps on that, we will be planting more root crops and probably some beans.  I will probably leave some space to add some lettuce by the end of the month.  We will also be replanting brambles back in their old spot (and supplementing them with brambles that we temporarily planted in a raised bed earlier this season) and possibly placing some fence posts and braces along the top of the replaced fence, etc.  The rest of the month, we will be weeding, watering, mowing and harvesting, etc.

It never stops.