Work Day at Community Garden and Shady Sisters

Yesterday was a busy day. First stop—Community Garden. Our original plan was to weed the existing gardens one last time before the growing season ends. But, late last week, we had a load of mulch delivered, which needed to be spread on the new bed we will plant in the spring.


So, everyone (including the kids) hauled their wheelbarrows to the site and schlepped mulch for a couple of hours!






The kids had fun stomping the mulch down to make sure we had distributed it evenly. Audrey and I will go back today to plant the leftovers from our neighborhood plant swap.



After a quick stop at home to take Monty for a walk, it was out to the Shady Sisters gardens where we needed to sort the pots—saving the ones that were still in good shape and getting rid of the ones that were damaged. (Several local nurseries/garden centers take the pots back, but will do so only until October 1st so we had to make sure we could hit that deadline.)

Our next job was to un-pot and re-plant the plants that didn’t get sold this season. Gail started before I got there and then we worked for an hour together before we needed a lunch break. Linda joined us after lunch and the three of us worked for another 4 to 5 hours. We worked out a good system. Linda placed the plants, Gail dug the trenches, and I plopped the plants in.

Even in the cool weather—long pants and turtlenecks—we were working up a good sweat. Every once in a while, we’d stop for a quick water break and look at the growing stack of pots. On one break, Gail said, “I don’t feel tired until I look at that mountain of pots.” So, our motto for the afternoon became, “Don’t look at the pots—just keep working.” And, work we did. Unbelievably, we got almost everything in the ground!

It was a long but satisfying day of getting the gardens ready for winter. Ahhhhhh.

p.s. I found several small rocks in the holes/trenches we dug and piled them in an out of the way spot. Thought this made a cute shot.