Our community garden

Taken from my apartment's back stairs

 Since I am still not quite ready to take on a day-long hike on my injured ankle (I have been able to walk for almost 10,000 steps), the rest of the Senior Trailblazers headed up the Mt. Baker Highway to take on Heliotrope Ridge. That link takes you to my pictures from 2018. I did go for a short walk with Joy (who is also injured) at Lake Padden, but for today's subject, you get to see our apartment complex's community garden. You can see how parched it's getting around here, with the dry grass surrounding our gated garden.

Gate bringing us into the garden

Come on in! Our deer fence works because of a thin wire at the top of those posts, which keeps deer from trying to jump it. I have been surprised to see how well it works; once I was picking raspberries and heard the breath of a deer on the other side of the fence chomping down berries from his side of the fence. The ice chest outside is for people to put in or take out veggies to share.

Two garden plots with a walkway in between

As you can see here, we have plenty of vegetables and flowers. The plot to the right of the lettuce is not assigned right now, but it was full of strawberries from the previous tenant, and we all enjoyed feasting on them. They're gone for the season.

Three plots growing well

Those are Carter's garlic plants looking great on the left, flowers in the middle (not sure who planted them, but they are enjoyed by everybody), and happy tomato plants in the next plot. Because of last week's very hot weather, the tomatoes are going crazy, but nobody's unhappy about it.

Front side of my plot

Next comes my unruly potato plants in front, with red potatoes galore. Carter helped me harvest a few and cover the rest up from the rays of the sun. I think I'll have way more potatoes than I'm going to know what to do with. Many will be shared with my co-gardeners.

Nasturtiums, zucchini plants, and even some beets

At the other end of my plot, you can see how overgrown it has become, with everything sprouting at once. Carter showed me how to tell male and female blossoms apart on the zucchini, and we helped pollinate to encourage more robust zucchini plants.

Happy snail

While picking raspberries, I saw this snail who had made it up higher than my head, to a nice shady spot to beat the heat.  I wonder how long he's been there. If you go back to the first picture, you can see that we have a shady arbor on the southeast corner, with grapes beginning to appear, along with lots of raspberries and marionberries. Some that were exposed directly to the sun were burnt, but many spots were protected.

Shady respite from summer's heat

This is my favorite spot in the entire garden, not least because I can sit in a shady lawn chair and pick raspberries and pop them into my mouth. They are still getting ripe, but Carter picked enough to make several quarts of jam. Wouldn't you like to have some? I myself might actually have already reached saturation with raspberries.

We are going to have a garden party here next Sunday, and we'll share, bring stuff from both the store (cold beer and sodas), ribs and burgers, and delights from the garden to celebrate our wonderful community garden. 

:-)