Sunday, November 15, 2009

Last work day

What a wild weather weekend as usual...another work day postponed as 1-2 inches of rain soaked the Boston area yesterday. Certainly not ideal conditions for hauling compost. Today's temperatures in the 60s made up for it, that is, if one doesn't worry about whether or not the neighborhood will be underwater in a few years from all these possible effects of global warming.Having finished up my work requirement earlier in the season and experiencing some back problems, I chose not to participate, but I stopped over at the Minton Stable Garden to harvest more broccoli sideshoots (see above) and see how the work was progressing. John, who along with Todd from the Steering Committee was running the work day, filled me in on who managed to show up to finish up their hours. They had finished loading this truck, but because Apple D'Or Tree, the composting business and destination for our yard waste, is closed on Sunday, it will spend the night here. Hopefully the tires won't sink deeper in the mud overnight. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to compost all our waste on site because it doesn't get hot enough in our receptacles for it to break down. Although Apple D'Or is nearby and not expensive, what to do about our composting still remains an issue; a few people on the Steering Committee are interested in developing a workable on-site system.After I picked the broccoli I also noticed that the garlic I planted a few weeks ago is coming up.As I lingered to take photos of the garden Ralph and Karla showed up to begin the next phase of their work contribution: fitting the shed with hooks and other fixtures so our tools and supplies can be stored efficiently. Ralph is a woodworker and Karla designs cabinetry configurations (the Steering Committee was duly impressed with her blueprints), so the project is in good hands. There had been a bit of complaining among us about tools being left around the garden and difficulty maneuvering around the shed to retrieve needed items. These improvements will give items their proper place and free up some more space for storage.

5 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

You only had 1-2 inches? I looked at the weather station closest to me which is about 2-3 miles away and it registered 6" between Saturday through now. We had a lot of rain.

The little broccoli shoot looks good. I've got to go out soon and pick mine.

Sally said...

I was kind of lazy, thought I'd heard 1-2 inches of rain yesterday on WBUR in the background. After reading your comment I poked around and got this statistic at http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/KBOS.html. As I write this it indicated 1.41 inches in the past 24 hours since 6:54 am. But it did seem like it rained more than that. Maybe there was more rain north of town where you are.

Dan said...

Those broccoli really don't give up. They may have to postpone shutting down the garden for your broccoli :-)

Giulietta the Muse said...

Hey Sally, I just love writing blog posts, getting comments and then going to other folk's blog and leaving comments. Feels uplifting! Thanks for being such an enthusiastic commenter on my site ...

Interesting about composting. Saw a great documentary on the state of soil in the world and how to bring it back to life via composting. Industrial agriculture has stripped the soil of everything good in it!

G.

Sally said...

Julie, I can always count on you for telling it like it is!
And potential blog topics for the off-season...

Dan, if you saw some of the magnificent kale still growing in the MSG, you'd see I'm not the only one with a harvest.