Going with the flow

We spent the day happily planting many seeds and seedlings in the beautiful truckloads of compost donated by our new friends Jim and Cory over at www.digmyearth.com. The rain held off until we were ready to head out and blessed our new plantings with some fresh water.  We enjoyed that cool, misty morning together and celebrated our good fortune and the gift of going with the flow. It's amazing how things come together when you just trust and do what you love. Kind of like life!

The cooler weather has pushed back our planting schedule a bit, so we're postponing our next garden class until June, but we are already excited and preparing for our first children's class about gardening. Hope you can join us!

Here are some pictures from this weekend:

Brassica plants and herbs ready to get in the garden

tomatoes and marigolds for our high yield plot

Julianna and Kristen making the medicinal garden more beautiful

prepping the high yield plots

Chris and Jane hanging out with some tomatoes

Danny playing in that beautiful pile of compost

Karen relocating some beets into the rainbow garden

Can you guess what this is this?  Its happy in it's new home...

rainbow garden with a new fence for peas and a little color

Angie planting some grain by the roadside

Have a wonderful week!
~Marykaye

Mother's Day is a great time to get plantings out into the garden

We had a beautiful, sunny, perfect first Saturday together out in the community garden!  Old and new friends gathered to lay out plans for the medicinal and rainbow gardens and to put in some plantings (peanuts in the rainbow and romanesco broccoli in the Mother garden).  It was perfect timing for those who hold off on planting until after Mother's Day, when the risk of frost will be less.

Here are some pictures from our day:

sunny skies over the garden

the sign on the corner of Elmerton and State Farm road

Krista, Karen, Kristin and Jane breaking ground

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the medicinal garden


(even better with friends!) :)

one half of the Mother Garden

the rainbow garden  

peanuts (they'll have yellow leaves, so they are in 
their own stripe of the rainbow garden)

We'll be back out there this Wednesday from 6pm to dusk, so come on out if you'd like to play in the dirt with us!  Hugs and love to our garden sister Llenay who is on a 3 week trip to Africa planting seeds of peace, abundance and community among the women there.  


Happy Mother's Day!
~Marykaye

The garden is tilled and ready for us to get out there!

We are thrilled to report that the community garden is officially tilled and ready for us to start preparing the space for this year's garden.  We'll begin to bring out tools and lay down lines for the paths and sections in the next week and hope to start bringing in truckloads of compost next weekend.

Regular garden hours will begin next Wednesday (5/4) from 6 pm to dusk and Saturday (5/8) from 8 am to 11 am and everyone is welcome.  If you can't make it out there, no worries: we can't wait to start having some more pictures to post so we can show you what we are up to!

Another exciting item: we are featured in the May issue of Natural Awakenings magazine, a great new local publication highlighting natural, alternative events and practitioners in Central Pa.  You can find copies at most studios, health food stores or anywhere friends gather or you can contact them if you have someplace you'd like this wonderful free resource to be available.  You can also check out some of this month's content on their Facebook page and a digital edition for May should be online soon.

For those who enjoyed our last Fairy Festival in the garden and can't wait for the next one, consider checking out the Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm in Glen Rock, Pa this Friday, Saturday and Sunday (4/29-5/1).  Their mission: "to help people come alive to nature as well as our own creative natures and to invite people to nurture a sense of wonder; to respect and befriend all living beings as well as the environment that supports us all".  Beautifully put!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
~Marykaye

Stay tuned!

We heard back from DCNR and they are just waiting to till the garden until after the ground dries up a little from all of this rain!  (We've cancelled this weekend's planned garden opening and classes until we can get out there).  Just wanted to let you know that we are still here!

  Have a great day!
  ~Marykaye

Mechanicsburg Earth Day Festival canceled due to inclement weather

We're sorry to miss the festival this Saturday but it sounds like the funds can be used for other important projects and it may be a pretty thunderstormy day. More refreshment for Mama Earth!

~Take care,
Marykaye

Join us at the Mechanicsburg Earth Festival this weekend!

beautiful image from www.tracysworld.com

We are all chomping at the bit to get back out there for our spring planting but plans are still on hold awaiting tilling of the garden by the township. We have some calls out and are hoping that that may take place sometime in the next week or two!  For now, we're gazing at slender green seedlings and dreaming of abundant harvests... :)

To hold us over, here's some news from around the webisphere that seemed interesting:

We aren't the only ones that think kids and gardening go together well.  It's exciting to hear that the USDA is funding a $1 million dollar initiative to establish vegetable gardens at 70 elementary schools in four states.  The goal of the pilot program is to help educate kids about food production and good nutrition, acknowledging that a garden is one of the best (and most fun!) ways to do that.  You can read more about it here:

 USDA project will fund vegetable gardens at 70 schools

We hope you can join us this weekend for the Mechanicsburg Earth Day Festival from 9 to 3 pm.  It's a great opportunity to enjoy music and fun activities while remembering to honor this beautiful earth, our home!  Our Children's Rainbow Garden members will be hosting a table with kid's activities and helping out at the festival throughout the day.

You can check out: http://www.mechanicsburgearthdayfestival.com for more information.

~Hope your Earth Day (4/23) is wonderful wherever you are! :)

The great leaf compost experiment

We had a great first day out in the garden!  Sunshine+wind+blue skies+friends is a recipe for happiness, for sure (and it sure helps with getting that daily dose of Vitamin D).  Every season brings new adventures and challenges and the most recent one was the discovery that a majority of the community garden is now covered in a pretty thick layer of partially composted leaves (several feet deep in places).  We spent a couple of hours yesterday moving them to the edge of our garden plots while we took turns guessing the purpose of the leafy distribution.  In the final count, we decided that it might have been a case of good intentions tempered by the logistics of composting (ie composted leaves need a lot more time to become healthy, plantable soil)!  The county schedules a pre-season tilling of the ground for gardeners any day now, so we'll see how it goes.  We're hoping it doesn't make it any harder for any of our fellow gardeners to plant but we've left a few of our plots as-is to see how it goes.

an especially large leaf pile on the edge of the garden

In other news, everyone's been starting seeds and here is a little sample of what we've got going: Greek tomatoes, Jalapeno peppers, Red Russian Kale, Lemon apple cucumbers, Kohlrabi, Mache, Leeks and Celery.  We are also planning a great medicinal herb garden and the Feverfew, Chamomile, Echinacea, Calendula, Lemon Balm and Organo are already on their way.  There are so many ways we can be connected to the earth for healthy eating and healing and we hope to highlight that in this year's garden!

chamomile in full bloom (ETA: this summer)

And it seems we keep hearing about more and more research on the benefits of gardening, so here's today's installment.  A recent study indicates that gardeners are more likely to eat fresh vegetables than non-gardeners, regardless of how much time and energy they actually spent out there in a garden.  This particular study focused on older adults, so if you are lucky enough to have one in your life, bring 'em on down to the garden to acquaint them with some yummy veggies!  It just goes to show you that nobody can resist a fresh-picked tomato or carrot straight out of the garden.

Hope you have a great week and get out there for a little sunshine or time with a friend.  We can all vouch for the fact that it definitely makes life so much more beautiful! :)

~Marykaye