Our Community Garden has looked like an unmade bed the last few weeks. Fear not, fall is the period of time when gardeners are as busy as bees turning dirt, planting cover crops, preparing beds for spring, and otherwise daydreaming about next season.
Preparation includes covering some of the beds with black plastic as a weed control strategy while a few of the other gardeners have planted oats to both control weeds and enrich the soil. Both strategies look awfully messy just now, but the end result--fewer weeds!--is well worth a bit of unsightliness.
Among the tasks that never quite got finished was putting a coat of white wash of the old cross at the far end of the garden. If we get a warm day soon we may get to it--otherwise, it will need to wait for spring. In any case, the Community Gardeners have lots of plans for making the garden a pleasant place to spend time in next year as well as a place of production and growth.
Even now, though we're in the last minutes of the gardening season, spots of beauty and inspiration remain; these nasturtiums, resting at the end of the Loaves and Fishes bed, remind us how bountiful and generous was our first-year garden. We are confident of even more blessing nest year!
Our Community Gardeners planted 14 Duke variety highbush blueberry plants on the first Saturday of October. These plants will grow to a height of 4 feet and will form a pretty hedge around the perimeter on the west side of the garden. Because blueberries are a perennial plant they can be taken as evidence that the Community Gardeners have faith that the garden will be perennial and a place over the coming years of our commitment to exploring and celebrating God's gift of the earth to us.
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