Update from Alan

Early update this week for two reasons: 1. It’s raining and 2. We had a really good week to report.
We’ll start with a ‘For the Record’. On Saturday, Shirley became the third of this year’s class to go exceed 14 hours in the gardens. The last seven days also set a record for total volunteer hours: 86 Monday through Sunday. That effort handily beat last year’s record of 80 hours. As a final encouragement: because of the weather, we started gardening in May 110 hours behind where we where at the same time last year. As of Sunday night we had not only made up for lost time but also we’d got a little bit ahead. By the first Sunday in June last year the accumulated hours totaled 381.5, as of last night the number stood at 388.5!
The big boost came Saturday morning when Catherine, Dick, Moeen, Phyllis and Shirley showed up at 9:00 to plant annuals in the main sign beds on Heart Lake Road. By noon the two oval beds and about half the vee bed were planted and watered in. There’s probably only a couple of hours more needed to get that area done. On Sunday, Dick and Joe spent the morning cutting grass in the nursery and earthing up several rows of potatoes. The handle on the lawn mower snapped and terminated the grass cutting operation and the break doesn’t look repairable. If anyone has an old mower that can be cannibalized for parts we’ll ‘treat it with dignity’ as they say.
In the wedding garden, the sod has been removed from the front edge of the north shrub bed but he tractor has not been available so the remaining sand has not been put in place. I’ve been told it will be done tomorrow!?
In the nursery garden the test section of a tomato support frame is gone and been replaced with a full 30' long framework. It looks like the easternmost beds of tomatoes will be a demonstration area for support structures. We’ll have the standard wood stakes, a spiral steel stake, a bamboo teepee and tomato cages. Of course, all this could come to nothing if the forecast frost does materialize over the next three nights. At noon today the prediction for the fairgrounds was 0 tonight, -4 Tuesday night and 0 Wednesday.
If we can get a good showing during this week we will be able to get the dahlia planting well in hand before we do another push at the weekend. - I did say this was the busiest part of the year! I expect to be at garden 9 to 12am and 2 to 4pm Saturday and Sunday. I’m hoping that the tractor will be available again so that compost can be dumped on the shrub beds.
As usual, bring the basic tool kit - spade, shovel and border fork if you have them - and please try to let me know that you are coming.