Hi All,
You don’t know how wet it is until a rain gauge tells you the story. The PGG have two rain gauges, one in the front of the Ashton House and one behind. This past week we measured 3 inches in front and 2 7/8 inches behind. Let’s call it 3 inches for Week 13. It was 73 degrees at 9 a.m. and 78 degrees as we headed home. Perfect gardening weather! Our first chore was to use a couple snow shovels to collect washed out river bed rocks. All was put back in order in a few minutes thanks to a couple Project GREEN volunteers. Thanks to volunteer, Jim Peters, for sharing this picture with us. By the way, it was also perfect conditions to gently pull most weeds from our garden soil.
There were 11 Project GREEN volunteers in attendance for Week 13. They were: Jim Peters, Mary Laughlin, Monica Hoherz, Kyle Hulscher, Nick Goergen, Hetty Hall, Lisa Haverkamp, Evelyn Frey, Erin Buscher, Pat Yeggy, and moi. Thanks to volunteers for writing their “check out” time as I could easily count with my fingers and toes an extra 2 1/2 hours for Project GREEN volunteers.
Our to-do list this week included: reloading the Little Free Library, cleaning up line-out bed peonies from the tree fall, installing a 16 square inch tile under the Arch and placing the new bird bath upon the leveled tile, and filling all our bird baths, digging or pulling weeds from west oval 3, the catalpa trees bed, & around the Arch. It was decided to fertilize containers + wagons later in the week. It was much too wet!
Here are our pictures after 13 weeks working at the PGG:
Project GREEN volunteers often meet visitors to the Gardens as we work on Mondays from 9 – 11 a.m. Patrick Fan is a regular visitor and can be easily recognized with a camera (and LONG lens) around his neck. Patrick keeps busy capturing pictures of eagles along the meandering Iowa River. If you can scroll into the picture shown on the top, right section of the tree there are two eagles who watched us as we watched them. Patrick knows where these two eagles nest (in City Park) and are raising their young. If you are able to access Facebook you can see a wonderful collection of pictures taken by Patrick who has 10,000 followers.
Here are the numbers for Week 13: Weeks 1 – 12 hours + Week 13 hours = 613 hours + 24 1/2 hours
= 637 1/2 hours for Project GREEN volunteers after 13 weeks at the Project GREEN Gardens. Many thanks to all!
Our next work session will be Monday, August 5 from 9 – 11 a.m. We are at the half-way point in our 2024 year. Time goes quickly! Hope to see volunteers next week. Until then, happy gardening! Diane
Pat Yeggy has completed collecting information from our 2024 Project GREEN volunteers. I will have available a copy for each of the 2024 active volunteers at Week 14’s 9 a.m. Monday meeting. Please remember to pick yours up!