We have had a beautiful weekend at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden. It seems like old times because it is the first weekend in ages and ages that I was there most of the day Saturday all by myself. However, I sadly discovered that Wednesday’s tornado (which had hit Old Towne East, Bexley and Eastmoor and ripped out giant trees and ripped off tree branches, except at my house) also touched down at the SACG, ripped apart and bent our patio umbrella, ripped leaves off two new apple trees and dumped part of a neighbor’s roof onto the orchard plot. All things considered, we and our neighbors were very lucky because no one was killed and I have not heard of any serious damage, beyond fallen trees and some damaged cars. I had checked on the Garden briefly, but only to confirm that the shed and fences were still standing and that our neighbor's black walnut tree had not hurt anyone (as it did a few Halloween's ago when it knocked off a spicket off a rain tank). I didn't notice the broken umbrella until Saturday morning. Anyone who is looking to upgrade their patio umbrella should feel free to donate their old umbrella to us. For that matter, one of our benches has broken a slat, so we need help either repairing it or replacing it for next season.
The CS volunteers had transportation difficulties and had to cancel at the last minute. We had a day planned of painting fence posts and braces for our Fall capital improvement project and, of course, mowing after all of the rain that we received this week. It will be important to get those posts and braces painted before it becomes too cold to do so in a few weeks. However, it can wait another week.
I spent the day re-stocking the Free Little Library, weeding the neighbor beds and along the alley compost bins, clearing out 1-1/2 rows of tomato plants, a row of beans (and trellis) and the dead squash plants from my plot, clearing out 1-1/2 rows of dead corn stalks from the co-op plot, planting in the food pantry plot a row of lettuce seedlings that were donated to GCGC on Friday by Strader’s Garden Centers, watering in the new seedlings planted last week, watering four rows of radish seedlings that had sprouted from what the Capital University volunteers planted last week, watering the row of turnips planted by OSU students a few weeks ago, and then harvesting for our weekly food pantry delivery, which was to Faith Mission’s Homeless Shelter. I then returned to harvest my own produce and pick some flowers for myself and an OSU football watch party that I was attending. 
Our donations are behind year to date from last year, but then we had to keep a plot out of cultivation pending completion of our water project. We are still ahead of or at the pace for 2014, 2015 and 2016, but I do not expect to exceed those years either because we had gardeners drop out late those seasons, resulting in the donation of all of their produce.  |
| We will miss our patio umbrella. Shame on you Tornado |
Although I enjoyed the peace and quiet on Saturday and being able to work at a leisurely pace without running around answering questions, I look forward to company next weekend. This week looks to continue summer weather until October 13, by which time I will be pulling the rest of the hot weather crops, especially basil and probably our sweet potatoes. We will spend Saturday painting posts and braces and won’t have time for anything else until everything that needs to be painted has been painted. That will leave us one month to prune the berry brambles, put in the posts and attach the braces to straighten the fence along the north and south sides of the Garden. I hope that we have some big strong men to dig those posts, because it requires effort.
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