 The first snow or two of the year have come and melted away again with some warmer temps, but the garden still rests. It's Advent and the days are growing darker, the land looks dead, prospects would be bleak if we didn't know the promised light was coming again, and soon.
And so we wait. We wait for the longest night of the year that is coming soon. We wait for Christmas when we celebrate the ultimate gift of earthy new life. We wait for the spring that will come again and bring with it green shoots and abundance of food to feed our neighbors. In October the session approved the on-going ministry of Give It Away Garden at First Presbyterian Church, making way for continuation of the four beds we already have, more beds if the Mission Outreach Team sees fit to build them, and the building up of our team of gardeners to care for this productive garden on our grounds. Here are a few photo updates taken today. The carrot greens are delicate and plentiful. The peas are flowering and growing lots of pods. The lettuce mix is going strong, and the second batch of radishes are getting bigger. No green tomatoes yet, but the plants look great! This morning instead of our usual worship service in the sanctuary, we started with a brief service of morning prayer and then scattered throughout the building and across the church property to work on a variety of mission projects that will serve our community. Our worshipful mission workers were busy in Give It Away Garden putting up deer fencing, harvesting radishes and lettuce, weighing our produce, and packing it all up to be given away to the community through the Hudson Area Food Shelf. Adults and kids worked side by side to accomplish all these tasks. Today five kids showed up to help Maggie get the last three beds planted. She was patient with their simultaneous excitement and distraction. It's the last week of school in Hudson, so the kids are all a little wired. The kids helped to put in carrots, tomato plants, and more radishes. The first box was planted earlier with radishes, mesclun salad mix, and peas that children started from seeds during a Messy Church night just after Earth Day in April. This morning 7 church members and staff gathered on the east lawn to get the final three beds built. Earlier in the month Maggie and Ken Wooley built the first bed to test the method and work out any bugs. Workers dug up the grass and simply turned it over within the area of the planned bed. Then planks were set in place to make the boundaries. Stakes on either side of the planks hold them in place, as well as screws at the corners. Finally dark top soil was poured into the beds, and they were watered. |
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