When There Are No Words

We have always been particularly blessed at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.   We have had nice volunteer groups the past two Saturdays.  We FINALLY have running water as a backup. But sometimes, the sun doesn’t shine and everything goes wrong.  This has been that kind of month.   We lost another giant in the local community garden movement 50 years too soon.  Although obviously not as sad in the great scheme of things, my personal sweet potato crop is looking like a bust (from lack of sun where I planted them in my plot).   A corporate volunteer group that contacted me out of the blue in August to volunteer last week, then emailed me just 13 hours before they were to arrive by saying “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter.”  What is a food shelter?  Of course, Cathy and I already spent an hour on Sunday picking up Granny Smith, Jonathan and McIntosh apple trees for them to plant and I ran to Lowes the night before (instead of getting some exercise) to get them paint.  Although I returned to water the saplings once during the week’s heat wave, the Granny Smith tree died before we could plant it on Saturday.     But the weekend ended on a high note when one of my best high school buddies stopped by on his way back to NYC. 

The annual Growing to Green Awards Banquet was earlier this month. Just hours earlier, we learned that Patrick Kaufman, one of the co-founders of Franklinton Gardens n/k/a Franklinton Farms had been moved to hospice.  He died as the event was ending.  He was only 40 years old.  Bill Dawson had been particularly fond of Patrick and was always giving him things for his community garden, like scales, tools, etc.  Bill created a beautiful vegetable memorial to Patrick and Marie Moreland (who died last year just after we all learned that Patrick had Stage IV Melanoma that had spread to his brain).  A Go Fund Me campaign raised money to support his young family.  Patrick was so devoted to community gardening and agriculture, was much loved and will be much missed.  The ceremony of his life was standing room only at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Delaware.   Nick and Rain Brother Jonathan gave particularly moving eulogies.   "Real quick" is a phrase that I will be adding to my regular vocabulary.

The following Saturday, we had some great volunteers.  They put our compost bins back together (while ensuring easy access to our water meter and tap), putting com-til into the bins, mowing our lawn, the orchard lawn and the Block Watch lot, cleaned the brambles from around the shed to make room for us to store our trellises and cages as the season winds down, started cleaning out the tomato plot that had been damaged by a trespassing vandal the week before, harvested for our weekly donation, etc.  While they were extremely helpful, they were not perfect.  One of them inadvertently hacked way too much of our raspberry bushes, and they failed to find and pick many green beans for our food pantry donation.  (I kept finding more after they left).  

The City came to install the meter, but thought that the pit had flooded (which it had not).   The next time, the City thought that there was hissing.  Our plumber from Rain One objected and the meter was then installed the following week.  Hooray!  Our plumber then showed me how to access the meter, how to use a curb key to control each hydrant, how to use these special hydrants (which have built-in backflow preventers), etc.  We need to find locks, though, because our bibb locks will not work on these hydrants because of the special built-in backflow preventer.  He is looking into it.   We are not going to need the water this year because of the buckets of rain that we have received.   I’m sure that Rain One is as glad as I am that we are finished with this project.

Our water connection was provided through a grant that we received from the Mid-Ohio Food Bank’s Urban Agriculture program through a grant received from the USDA to support urban agriculture.    We are seriously excited.  While leaving Marion Smithberger’s 40^th anniversary with the CBA party, I ran into Alyssa who was my co-conspirator in starting the SACG in 2009 and in getting the the Bexley Community Garden (n/k/a the south garden) operating that first year.  I told her that we had finally gotten running water.  She observed that the new Bexley Community Garden (k/a the north garden) has a dozen water hydrants and they had running water overnight from the very beginning.  Nice compare and contrast, n’est pas?  (But the north garden has really crappy soil). 

In August, I received an email from  Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical.  “My team (10 total) would like to spend our day volunteering at the Stoddart Avenue Garden.  Would you be able to help me coordinate time, day and activities?”  I would be “delighted.”  The volunteer organizer wanted to know what they would be doing, which, of course, depended on when they came and I described the various activities that we do depending on the time of the month.  “The exact date of service is September 19th. 9am- 12pm., “ she responds.   Great, I say, I have put you on our calendar.  I gave her our address, gave her directions, and told her not to wear white or open toed shoes because they were likely to get dirty.  Then, crickets.  I heard nothing for six weeks.  

Because I had described that they could possibly plant apple trees if they came mid-to-late September, we purchased three apple trees on sale from Strader’s Garden Centers.   Cathy was supposed to pick up her children from their out-of-town grandparents, but she cancelled that to pick up our trees for the J&J volunteers.  I was supposed to work out on Tuesday evening, but cancelled it to pick up paint for the J&J volunteers.  We like our volunteers to have fun and to make a real difference at the SACG.  

I sent another confirmatory email on September 17.  Again, crickets.  I became concerned.  Cathy shared with me that corporate groups are highly unreliable and high maintenance.  She told me horror stories.  I’m not a newbie in working with Fortune 500 corporations, so I thought that I had this covered.  But, after 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the organizer finally emails me: “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter. We will keep the garden in mind for next summer.”  Seriously?!  Don’t bother.  She clearly did not understand that I am a volunteer and she wasted my time.   I was taking time off from work to be there.   Not just my time, but Cathy’s time, too.    She could not care less about how much she inconvenienced people who have never done her any harm.   If this is the kind of person that J&J is counting on to lead it in the future, I have doubts that the company is likely to do well against more sensible and responsible competitors.    

Luckily, we had a great group of student volunteers coming from Capital University.   We also had two big strong guys sent to us by the Municipal Court.   Digging tree holes is serious work, so I had the CS volunteers attack that.   I gave them donuts to energize them.   They told me that it was very hard work.  They backfilled the holes with a mixture of the soil and com-til and then watered them in.   When they finished, one mowed the lawn, and  one moved the rest of the com-til to the rest of the compost bins. They also helped me to remove more of the spent sunflowers (whose seeds had been picked clean by the neighborhood finches).    

When the first group of Capital students came, I gave them donuts while I oriented them.  After explaining what projects we had available (including helping to plant the trees), they wanted to clean out the tomato plot and plant radishes.  However, at that point, they remembered that they were supposed to be next door at Kimball Farms.  Yikes!  

Luckily, about 10 minutes later, a larger Capital student group appeared.  By then, the donuts were gone.  So, I oriented them, too, and they did not want to pick their own project.  Gee.  So, I assigned them to clean out the tomato plot and plant rows and rows of radishes.  One of them was originally from Thailand, which is our first.  I did not bore her with how much I love Thai food (how cliché), or that I’m growing a GIANT lemon grass bush at home, etc., because she had never grown anything in her life.  She had a great time using the cultivator preparing the ground for planting.  I had to take it away so that the other students could take turns.   So, this year, we have now had volunteers from Korea, Thailand, and Albania.   I'm feeling quite cosmopolitan for someone who rarely travels more than a few miles from my community garden.

One student picked up neighborhood litter.  They all picked about four pounds of green beans.    Good job!  They also had to nest the tomato cages and stack and roll the trellises, weeded the paths and around the raised beds, and helped me to weed along the southern fence line and remove the weed trees.  The compatriots next door cleaned out garden beds and filled the neighborhood’s trash dumpsters all along the alley with weeds and vegetable plants.

Both of these guys ended up in NYC and I'm here

Fall finally arrived on Saturday and it was too cool to paint.  But it was so much more pleasant to work in this weather.   Earlier in the morning, one of my best friends from high school emailed me that he was going to be in our hometown (from NYC where he currently lives).  I hadn’t seen him since the summer that I graduated from college.   He graduated from Colby and then went to Ecuador with the Peace Corps.  He later started a recycling business in NYC (years ahead of anyone else), paying homeless individuals for finding and returning bottles and cans, but it only lasted four years.  For the last 20 years, he has had a landscaping business in NYC during our growing season and a fruit farm in Ecuador during our winter.  When I explained that I could not get away very quickly because we were planting apple trees, he decided that he had to see the Garden and suggested driving by on his way back to NYC.  (I then had to quickly clean up my house and yard.  Yikes.).  

He and his wife stopped by Sunday morning.  Sabrina was at the Garden harvesting sweet potatoes and cleaning out her plot.  She offered them some of her produce (including giant sweet potatoes), which delighted Paul’s wife.   They live in a high-rise apartment on the upper west side and can’t grow their own food while up here.  She clearly misses it and has her own dehydrator when in Ecuador.  I sent her home with some of my poblano and jalapeno peppers and three types of homemade jam from cherries that we grew, and strawberries and peaches  that we picked. 

So, it’s been a busy week with both highs and lows.