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Thursday, May 9, 2024

The End of the Year for Grandma's Garden

I'm leaving for Indiana on Tuesday; I have three more days with the kiddos in the garden.  There's a lot to be done and not very much time; I may be going in over the weekend.

We emptied the onion and flower raised bed outside the garden gate.  The Dollar Store had thin plastic pots, 12 for $1.25 (don't get me started on the 25% price increase across the board when inflation was less than 4% last year), and I bought in bulk. Each scholar received a veggie or a flower, and no one was disappointed.  

The contents of the hanging baskets are being sent home, too.  Some needed two small pots or one giant pot or some combination including the medium and huge containers I've been collecting over the year (along with all the toilet paper rolls we've used which are in several paper bags behind my closet door).  Watering instructions were given to the novices, plastic bags to those who were toting lots of things home.

The hanging baskets present a dilemma.  In the past, I've turned off the irrigation to the raised beds and the baskets.  But this year I have extra seeds and a penchant for planting.  I am also reluctant to remove the baskets since that would disassemble the intricate irrigation system My Garden Guru and his students installed last summer.  

My thought is to empty half the soil in each hanging basket and dump it in the Digging Garden (a moniker I like more than The Sandbox, since there's no sand but kids like to dig).  We can fill the baskets with new soil and flowering seeds, leaving a beautiful array of color for anyone who's driving by.  It's that or nothing for the veggie garden, too.  Sunflowers?  Hollyhocks?  The possibilities are overwhelming me.

We still have to send home the veggie garden goodies and decide who gets the strawberry and blueberry bushes.  I have to make Garden Leader certificates and deliver them to classrooms.  I have to pot the things I've promised the staff and deliver them, too.

Can somebody add a few days between now and Friday?

2 comments:

  1. It seems so early to be taking apart a garden when we are just beginning to plant.
    You are such a dedicated volunteer garden master.

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  2. I hear you...although Fresno schools will run until the first week of June, I will be finishing next week, mid-May, as the end-of-year activities become overwhelming and I would just be in the way. Even on Wednesday I had one teacher surprised to see me as she thought it was only Tuesday, they had been gone on a field trip on Monday, throwing her whole week off. Teachers don't need that at the end of the year. I still have 100 more certificates to do.

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