My garden buddy Macon Fry has a famous memory of sitting in a bar one night next to a highly intoxicated gentlemen that preceeded to inform him of a helpful fact, " The one thing about New Orleans in the summer time.... It ain't the heat that kill ya, it's the humility!" Well I'm down here in the Big Easy keepin my humility alive and not trying to test myself with the humidity and heat that seriously returned to this city since it left in October.
I suppose it is a lucky reality that there is not more than 4 months of the year that I will have to endure this heat, but I'll be honest a day seems to travel slowly in this weather. I have to set some new hours of operation for the garden and continue to inform local member of such changes. I believe in the summer time it will be from like 6am-noon or 1 then brake till even like 4 and I'll be back out there from 4-6/7pm. The sun doesn't set at this point till around 7 or 8 anyways and those evening hours are important for watering and planting.
Currently we are harvesting Cucumbers, eggplant, basil, scallions, green beans, and cherry tomatoes. Still on way is okra, peppers, watermelon, honeydew melon, zucchini and yellow squash, and yard long beans. These are great veggies that are great to grow and show people who have never seen them. I must give a great kudos to this season's cucumbers for their abundant harvest and longevity! We just pulled out the last harvest for this summer, but luckily the cukes have just started rocking over at Macon's garden The Gathering Tree community garden!
Quick side note, don't know if I've mention the Gathering Tree garden Statis. So Macon Fry is an excellent gardener and his skills are just as useful as his pragmatic realism! At this point in his long endeavor of gardening here in New Orleans he's just about thrown in the towel to summer garden, it's just takes a huge toll on one's sanity. Which is logical from my perspective in being a young garden who even in my youth and vitality question how many more summers of ridiculous heat I will consciously be able to bear?... But for now, I'm not quite sick of sweating gallons at a time trying to get vegetables to grow let alone stay alive. So Macon has thrown most of the beds under plastic and is allowing me to grow a row of Okra, cukes, butternut squash, basil, and some sun jewel melons. And because they're in my hand he's giving me the freedom to bring the harvest back to Pigeon Town. So cukes, squash, melons, and okra will all be available later on!
This past week I had a over 30 young abled volunteers in the garden working on a number of projects. The group was from a Presbyterian church in Houston TX. and come to New Orleans for a biannual mission trip working with non-profits doing home restoration. Well with my ties to the St. Charles Ave. Presbyterian they through each group to me for a handful of hours at the end of the day. Is 1:30- 4:00 the worst time to be out in a New Orleans Summer?... Of course it is! But with these groups traveling outside their own states, they put themselves ready for anything... and they work like champs! I'll put some new pictures up of what they have done, but for now here's a couple of the groups photos!
Thank you again so much Memorial Drive Presbyterian church for coming out and supporting this project!
I suppose it is a lucky reality that there is not more than 4 months of the year that I will have to endure this heat, but I'll be honest a day seems to travel slowly in this weather. I have to set some new hours of operation for the garden and continue to inform local member of such changes. I believe in the summer time it will be from like 6am-noon or 1 then brake till even like 4 and I'll be back out there from 4-6/7pm. The sun doesn't set at this point till around 7 or 8 anyways and those evening hours are important for watering and planting.
Currently we are harvesting Cucumbers, eggplant, basil, scallions, green beans, and cherry tomatoes. Still on way is okra, peppers, watermelon, honeydew melon, zucchini and yellow squash, and yard long beans. These are great veggies that are great to grow and show people who have never seen them. I must give a great kudos to this season's cucumbers for their abundant harvest and longevity! We just pulled out the last harvest for this summer, but luckily the cukes have just started rocking over at Macon's garden The Gathering Tree community garden!
Quick side note, don't know if I've mention the Gathering Tree garden Statis. So Macon Fry is an excellent gardener and his skills are just as useful as his pragmatic realism! At this point in his long endeavor of gardening here in New Orleans he's just about thrown in the towel to summer garden, it's just takes a huge toll on one's sanity. Which is logical from my perspective in being a young garden who even in my youth and vitality question how many more summers of ridiculous heat I will consciously be able to bear?... But for now, I'm not quite sick of sweating gallons at a time trying to get vegetables to grow let alone stay alive. So Macon has thrown most of the beds under plastic and is allowing me to grow a row of Okra, cukes, butternut squash, basil, and some sun jewel melons. And because they're in my hand he's giving me the freedom to bring the harvest back to Pigeon Town. So cukes, squash, melons, and okra will all be available later on!
This past week I had a over 30 young abled volunteers in the garden working on a number of projects. The group was from a Presbyterian church in Houston TX. and come to New Orleans for a biannual mission trip working with non-profits doing home restoration. Well with my ties to the St. Charles Ave. Presbyterian they through each group to me for a handful of hours at the end of the day. Is 1:30- 4:00 the worst time to be out in a New Orleans Summer?... Of course it is! But with these groups traveling outside their own states, they put themselves ready for anything... and they work like champs! I'll put some new pictures up of what they have done, but for now here's a couple of the groups photos!
Thank you again so much Memorial Drive Presbyterian church for coming out and supporting this project!
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