Monday, April 13, 2009

Yard Work and Gardening!

Austin and I were able to join members of the St. James the Less parish for their annual yard clean-up event on the day before Easter. I got my tired winter muscles moving again, and it felt great being outside and working. We weeded, raked, picked up litter and delivered endless loads of mulch.

The crew worked around the rectory, church and in the courtyard. The also wound their way around and did some significant work at the Catholic Worker. They trimmed shrubs, weeded and mulched in front of our place. They deserve quite a bit of gratitude for this all this hard work!

Even though the crew wore me out entirely, I was able to trek off afterwards and finally broke ground in our new garden! The parish is going to let us use one of the baseball diamonds in the fields off Huy Road. I dug up some soil samples to be sent off for testing. I also was able to start our much-needed compost pile. No longer will we need to have buckets of compost sitting on the counter top, because they can go right in the ground whenever we want to empty them!

We will have a meeting on Wednesday, April 15th at 7:00 pm for anyone who is interested in joining us in our gardening efforts. It would be wonderful if this garden turned into a true community affair. Neighbors, parishioners and Catholic Workers welcome to participate. At the very least, we’d love a moderate garden to grow produce for our ministries, the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry as well as for neighbors or anyone who helps in the garden. If there is lot of interest, we could have a larger garden.

Also: We will gladly take your kitchen compost! Save your vegetable peels, fruit cores, used coffee grounds (filters and all), tea bags and eggshells. Just store them in a container with a lid and drop it off anytime. Please don’t include meat, bones or any cooked foods, as they tend to attract pests. This link from the EPA has lists of what to include and not to include at the bottom.

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