bedraggled

Cue banjo music.

In the latter part of March and early April, we encountered a garden that showed signs of a long and bitter battering from the winter of 2014-2015. Strewn with detritus (including, apparently, an instance of fly dumping), rusting implements, and piles of rotting tree branches, the property looked more like Grey Gardens than Ginkgo Gardens.

The actual Grey Gardens.

On April 11, a group of our stalwart Chicago Cares volunteers helped us towards putting the garden in order. We harvested compost from our bins and mulched our fruit trees. We touched up the front fence and picked up trash. We even cleared brush--a chore often performed by Chiefs of State.




We have no chain saws, only rusty loppers, so we didn't feel all that presidential.

In addition to painting and cleaning, we also planted our first beds of radishes and lettuces. Because the last frost free date for our region is usually in late April or early May, we protected our beds with temporary hoop houses--polymer sheeting stretched over metal hoops that we arched over the beds.

Thanks to our the efforts of our friends from Chicago Cares, the property looks less like a hoarder's back yard and more like a garden.

March 11 volunteers