It was a beautiful spring day. The call of nature overcame our original plan to go to a gem and mineral show. We are very much into gem and mineral shows and for the past few years, strive to hit them all. Calvin is big on fossils and all shows have a children’s learning area. But the thought of driving to Towson and being indoors was so unappealing that within a matter of minutes, we regrouped and came up with alternative plans.  (We agreed to hit the Gem and Mineral Show on Sunday.)

So, under the revised impromptu plan, Patrick and Calvin went to the Air Show at Andrew’s Air Force Base. Teuta and I decided to do the garden thing. So, we first stopped by the community garden and installed cages on the cage-less eggplant plants.  We also inserted poles along the width of the plot.  These poles would be joined with string to create a bean support unit that I would complete next weekend.

Then Teuta and I headed off to the nursery, with plans to spend more time at community garden plot, as well as my own home garden.  We drove to my favorite nursery. Teuta is big on peppers so I let her know that I already planted two banana pepper plants in my community garden plot. Well, she informed me that these were fine for shopka salads (a wonderful salad that I lived on in Bosnia and Kosovo with tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and feta cheese).  However, banana peppers were not to be used for ratatouille, a favorite dish of mine.  Teuta is the ratatouille queen. So we picked up two cubanella pepper plants to ensure endless supplies of ratatouille over the summer. Teuta also saw some fragrant purple basil plants so we grabbed a few of those.

We wandered over to the flower area and I was telling Teuta about fellow community garden plotters who were planting marigold flower plants with their vegetables. I vaguely recalled that there was a bug repellant benefit to planting marigolds with vegetable and was musing about it when a woman, who had overheard our conversation, excitedly let me know that marigolds were wonderful bug repellants, especially helpful for protecting tomatoes, and she went on to explain how many we should get and where to plant them around our vegetables.  So we loaded up on marigolds. It took me a bit longer than necessary simply because I was getting all caught up in the color aspect and how I could creatively use the color combinations…….but then eventually I snapped to and grabbed enough marigolds to do the bug zapping job.

Teuta in the Plot

We enjoyed lunch, ran a few errands, talked (and generally resolved) all the world’s problems and a few of our own 🙂 and, after that, retired to my backyard garden area where we relaxed a bit before heading off to my community garden plot. We loaded up Calvin’s old Red Flyer wagon with our supplies and walked the short 10 minute trip to the community garden.  Once there, we planted the two cubanella peppers plants, basil plants and bug repelling marigolds. I also installed the cages around the the newly planted cubanellas.

Lugging the Watering Cans

I had hoped to water everything but learned that the cistern was empty. So we headed back home and filled up empty lemonade bottles and three watering cans with water and compost tea. Then we walked back to the community garden and watered all the plants.

While we were still there, Patrick and Calvin joined us, after they had returned from the Air Show. Patrick installed a barrier between the wood chip path and my third row so that I would have a clean line for planting and the wood chips would stay where they belonged 🙂 I need to pick up some bricks to do the same on the other side of the path. That will be a job for next weekend.

Patrick Installing the Barrier (with Calvin)

So, all is well in community garden plotland. I feel like we are on top of things and all is truly well and right with the world.