Gardening 2024

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My friend Marsha, when she had hair.

https://www.kemperkeimfamilyfuneralchapel.com/obituaries/Marsha-Brown-9/#!/Obituary

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We got flash flooding rain today.  Not sure if the garden flooded but it did all around it.

I brought home a trunk load of decorative bird and butterfly houses along with a 3 foot gnome and friends.  Saved them from the dumpster at my friend's parent's hoarder house.  I'll put them out of the garden tomorrow for people to take.

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I brought home another car full of stuff for the garden.  The other stuff was snatched up pretty quickly today.  This more unopened office supplies we can use for the plant sale and gardening hand tools that seem to disappear every year.

Phebe is doing great as the pantry lead.  The cottage garden lead is walking around in a boot.  Marsha's group has decided not to continue the boardwalk and wants all the construction stuff out of there, thank god.  I need that composite to rebuild one of our bridges.  They are a little niffed I won't let them spend their budget on straight wood chips.  We get free wood chip mulch and we don't waste our money when we can get something that works for free.  I'm letting them buy more plants instead so that should make them happy.

I did pull the hippy gnome for me.  He reminds me of Tom, nothing sets him off, relaxed cool.  Put him in the milkweed garden.  Got to have a little hardscape in a garden.  Just a little though!

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We met with Marsha's husband and planned the party.  It will be in September for 200 to 250 people.  We've got this.  Basically the cancer came back sometime in May and exploded, attacked all her organs.  She was on hospice two weeks.  Kissed him and died.  Leslie reports she was at the garden, overwhelmed by sadness for Marsha and felt her go through.  She had told me that before I told her what time Marsha had died.

People working the gardens today.  The grass really needs mowed.  And I really need to get out the gas powered weed wacker.  Phebe harvested 90 pounds of potatoes, maybe a record.  Life goes on.

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I was busy last fall and busy this spring.  Never got around to lawn mower maintenance.  Engine locked up from lack of oil.  Totally my fault.  My daughter is giving me hers.  They pay a guy to mow their grass from the pot plantation.  I'm still going to beat myself up for not taking care of my tools.

The damn kiosk came up again.  Originally it was part of my plan for a self guided garden tour and welcoming area.  Then it got bumped up to the Extension, a bunch of shit and a final decision of where to put it at great expense and no plan for it's purpose.  It's been brought back up again and they want to dump it back in my lap.  I'm not so sure I'm going to take it back.   

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I like that lawn mower.  I broke it and I need to fix it!  Sandy is going to teach me how to rebuild a lawn mower engine.  Some how that feels like some badass radical joy and I am looking for that.  So excited.  

Who the hell stacked the weed buckets?!  Damn helpful people.    I know it looks nicer but they are hell to get apart when you do that.

Nice night out there.  Spent 3 hours trimming the garden.  We have a nest of baby bunnies in the pantry.

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Marsha's husband is cleaning out her growing room and bringing everything to the greenhouse.  The idea is we will train new growers and supply them with lights.  Hopefully none of that comes home with me.  Not sure what the rush is but he has been evicting Marsha's stuff all week.  Maybe just trying to keep himself busy.  Or fearful Marsha will haunt him if he doesn't follow the marching orders.    He's been to the gardens twice that I know of bringing people to see where she spent all her time.  I've been wanting to be there too.

Only the second time I've trimmed the whole garden this year.  My arms are like jello and between the shoulder blades ache.  Today I'm trying to make a dent in all the pots the parks department bought us.  It's economical and ecological to clean all these pots but I'm thinking I'd rather pitch them and use my own money to buy new ones.    I'm definitely buying a couple bags of top soil to fill in a hole rather than try to dig some and haul it all the way across the garden.  I'm done mowing this low spot alongside the greenhouse and having to wrestle the mower out of the hole, almost falling into the greenhouse.

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Workday at the garden.  Marsha's team is cleaning up.  They got a cubic yard of soil laid out and wood chipped 3 paths.  Tom worked on the final part of the boardwalk.  I can't watch.  They are changing her design some.  It needed to be cleaned up.  It's been a construction zone for 6 years.  I wish she had had the chance to finish it.  Everyday, several times a day something comes up where I would have said something to Marsha and we would have laughed or made some plans.  

Anyway, it was sunny out there.  I was done by 9:30.  Watered and hung out in the shade until the rest of them finished up at noon.  Came home and slept on the couch the rest of the afternoon.  Tonight I hope to run the pots and flats through the bleach water.  I need my garage back to work on the lawn mower.  We hit the upper 90's next week and I will be worthless.

My SIL was granted the commercial pot grows license.  Not easy to get and he zoomed right through the process.  Says a lot about how into this he is.  Now he has to find investors to get up and growing.

Ran out of room for the pots and flats drying in the garage with a couple hundred pots left.  Guess I'll finish tomorrow but this task, the thrill is gone! 

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And I lost it.  Had to announce Marsha's replacements at the meeting tonight.  Knew I was going to choke and tear up.  I anticipate it's going to be a long time before I can publicly talk about her without losing it.  Laura did apologize for lashing out at me about Marsha's memorial stone or bench.  Probably didn't mention that.  Just her anger in the grief loss process.  Understandable but I didn't need that punch.  Unrelated but she wants to put a fabric cloth down over the whole greenhouse floor for padding.  I just want to say did Marsha approve that?  All the people who walk on that the shit we drag over that, drop on it, don't see that working out.  Kept my mouth shut and walked away.

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Over 500 pots plus flats cleaned.  I have my garage back.  The car is full.     I take everything back to the greenhouse tomorrow.

Checked in with Marsha's husband to see how he's doing.  He's bringing more of her houseplants tomorrow to give away!   

We are swampy.  Temps are way up there with high humidity.  The bugs are thriving.  Misquotes with the West Niles virus have been detected.  Good time to stay in and work on my growing room.

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He's selling her car today.  If not, he may leave it in my driveway so it's easier for people to come see.  I am not ready for this.  I see that car everywhere and think of her.

Yeah, it's gone.  I picked him up from where he sold it.  He's just trying to find some closure.

We got a nice rain.  The gardens needed a drink.

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I've got some cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, eggplant and one big ass zucchini.  Rosemary and basil.  Yo Sandy, what can we make out of this?  We're not sure but some how it calls for a barbeque.   

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Finally learned how to cook an eggplant, chunk it.  All that made a good stir fry.  A whole stick of butter really helps.  We held back on the zucchini.  We're going to cut that up like bread sticks and make something called courgettes.

Excessive heat warning all week.  We keep getting dumped on with spot showers.  Saving me from having to water but we're going to be steamy.

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The storms rolled through this afternoon and after they left a strong wind came through.  I lost a 9 foot branch.  I have a whole new sunny section in the front yard.  I'm thinking it's time to take that tree down.  Everytime it storms, it gets damaged.

Jim asks me tonight what is up with the greenhouse.  They want to plastic the floor and asked him how much fine rock to put down.  It's a big truck full.    He wanted to know what's wrong with the rock floor we have.  I ask Jim what he thinks.  He's the construction guy.  He's joining me in, I'm not hauling all that rock in there.     I asked Donna if Marsha knew about that and she said she did.  I asked about all the shit we drag over that and she said we have to put special feet on the table.  They are doing it because it will be easier on the feet and easier to clean.  Yeah, I don't know about this.

Totally forgot about handicapped accessible.  The herb garden is renovating their garden and I don't think their new design took that into account.  I really need to be done being overall lead.  My head isn't in it any more.

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We got cloud cover just as the truck was pulling in with a yard of soil.  Tom was working on the last section of the boardwalk.  Little easier to be in Marsha's garden but it really needs weed wacked.

I reminded Kevin the bridge he is rebuilding has to meet the handicap slope guidelines.  He tells me we'll wait until somebody official tells us that.  She just did!    Let it go, he's got a good heart.  Take all that manliness, get on that wheelbarrow because I overfilled it.   

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DJ stopped by to run her flats through the bleach water.  Her 91 year old dad has one of those diseases where the paranoia is taking over.  She said something about not having a pinus so her opinion doesn't matter with her dad.  Yeah my dad was the same way.  It's their age, boys were more valued in certain things then girls.  Doesn't mean they didn't love us. 

Take her family for example.  She, a white woman, married a big, black man who was head of a national motorcycle club, back in the 80's.  And her sister turned butch, to the point I thought she was just an ugly guy, and married a woman.  That's a lot for a guy from that time period to take.  I'm surprised the guy didn't have a heart attack years ago.     That's a lot of love for him to accept all of that.

I had to call Laura about the greenhouse.  She was apologizing again for going off on me after Marsha died.  She didn't have time to prepare and didn't get to see her one last time.  I knew back in May things were going south and I did get to see her and say goodbye.  Not going to mention that.  But I hope this is the last time she apologizes for going off on somebody when she's in a bad mood.

Anyway, I have another carload of shit to take back to the greenhouse.

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Wait a fucking minute.  The board had agreed we needed to get the organization's finances under control.  The agreement was we would live within our budget this year and the money we made this year would be for next year's budgets.  We were only going to tap this year's earnings for emergencies or unforseen expenses.  There's one person who keeps coming up with shit and saying the board will pay for it.  Same person who wants to ask for money for the greenhouse floor.  I'm calling the board on it.  I've asked that we review where we are at within our spending.  A business should probably do that periodically through out the budget year, right?

The gardens spend most their money in the fall on projects.  If we need to adjust the money allocations to stay within the overall planned budget, the money has to come from the garden budget.  I kind of need to know that now.  I can cover some overage but we've got a bridge that needs rebuilt that we didn't put in our budget.

This is the part that takes away all my joy running the gardens.  I hate keeping track of the budget.

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Got crickets on my email but the treasure jumped on it.  Spreadsheet on approved budget vs actual spending came out to all of us.  Then she went off on talking about an investment portfolio.  Oh hell no, we are not volunteering here to make money for investments.  Especially when they cut my budget by a third so we could get a little money in the bank.  Hate the money stuff.

Beka went to the Iris sale.  She was able to buy enough different Iris to get us certified as a heritage Iris garden.  Even got me a chocolate iris for the chocolate garden.  Okay but now what?  How do we educate the public on that?  And you know I'm on a kick about native plants and increasing our bug population.    Do we really want our funding and manpower going there?

Hot out there but I was able to work in the shade for a while.  Feels good to get a sweat on  Going back tonight to work on the front of the building.  Not my job but the weeds were taking over.  Tomorrow I hit up my beds that are in the morning shade.  Good to be back working the gardens.

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The beekeeper showed up.  You're going to piss off the bees, I'm out of here.     It's okay, I was ahead on tasks. less time I spend there tomorrow unless I find more to do.

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Last day of intense heat.  I'm busy the next few mornings but my evenings are clear and I can get back to gardening.  The weeds and plants need cut back.  I can do clean up and dream a little bit.  I need to get some borders around those renovated beds.  I'm thinking something with bricks.  I'm going to have a whole pile of those coming up.  I'm kind of liking this:

Except standing those back bricks up on their ends because I am a heavy mulcher.  I like the length on the bottom ones because our mowers just can't seem to get close enough to the edges to keep the weeds from growing in!

My two leads taking over for Marsha got lucky.  The University is doing 6 classes on advanced training for fruiting plants.  That should settle their nerves a little bit about taking over for her.