Now that my every waking moment isn't consumed with the acquisition of a truck to replace my aging one I can consider the things done in recent days/weeks/months.
As fulltimers we find ourselves frequent visitors to whatever post office is near. And lately, with our daughter's family moving hours away from our current location, we have been very frequent visitors with packages of "things" for the grandkids. On one of these package shipping runs I came upon something a little unusual. It appeared as though someone decided to convert the Cartersville, GA main post office into a drive-thru facility.
I came upon the scene just as it happened but I was not privy to any of the details as how things came to be. The only thing I know for sure is that the driver was visibly upset.
Something new for us at this location is that a number of the volunteers in The Village got together and put in a community garden. We were given a plot of ground near the volunteer meeting room. It is a little shy on sunshine as it is shaded by a building in the morning and tall trees in the afternoon but gets good light mid-day. And that seems enough; tomatoes, beans, squash, zucchini, kale, and okra are doing well.
Everybody that wanted to participate kicked in some seed money and then what labor they could contribute to the tilling, planting, fencing (we're thick with deer and rabbits), and weeding. I was able to get in on planting day and put in seedling sprouts and seeds of the beans, okra and corn. And since planting day I've acquired a couple of blisters hand pulling weeds and grass. All in all, good therapy.
The 4th of July weekend I took a small harvest of everything you see above plus a slug of kale, which I ate before taking the picture. The zucchini and okra went on the grill that same day. The cherry tomatoes are from Cyndee's plant that we have at our campsite. I've never had so much flavor in such a small package.
Gardening seems to be a theme of late, but on a much larger scale than our little community vegetable garden. The Corps has embarked on partnerships with environmental groups that are promoting pollinator habitat and aquatic habitat. The pollinator program has seen the establishment of bee hives and the plowing of what was once mowed grass road shoulders and day use area green space. Last fall and winter was spent plowing the grass and tilling the soil in preparation for sowing native wild flower. In early spring the seeding proceeded and in just a few weeks it was evident that these plants were happy with their new home.
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| This plot is adjacent to the Upper Stamp Creek trail head parking area. |
Since they are wild flowers they are not bold and showy like a residential flower garden. But when you get closer in they can be pretty spectacular.
Cyndee and I can't take any credit for work done on the wildflowers, that was almost all Ranger labor. We've just enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
Something that we did help with was the construction of a hoop-house for cultivating aquatic plants that will become habitat and shoreline stabilization. Many hands pitched in to construct the hoop-house but volunteer Curt went above and beyond, single-handedly assembling many components on weekends and evenings. The below GIF spans 62 days.
In the GIF above when you see the covering balloon up, that is when a gust of wind came through just as we were putting the covering on. We all almost went parasailing! That thing tried to take off with us holding on.
With the covering secure the end walls and finishing touches were added and the little hot-house was immediately put into service. The floor was covered in kiddie pools which were filled with cultivated button bush sprigs. If I heard correctly, they will be mature enough to transplant in the fall of 2023. Typically the survival rate of these little clippings is in the neighborhood of 50%. So far our staff biologist has a 95% rate going. Outstanding!
I was in the hot-house this past weekend and was surprised to see the bushes had grown so big and were beginning to bloom. To my untrained eye they looked ready to go for this fall. They are certainly better looking than any of the plants we worked with in previous plantings.
So these are button bushes (above). I had never heard of them until a couple of seasons ago when we started helping with the aquatic life habitat rehabilitation. They get planted in the shallow coves of the lake in the winter when the water levels are low and the lake bed is exposed, or nearly exposed.
The photo to the right was taken in September of 2021. Sleds full of water willows were plugged in at one of the many coves on Allatoona Lake. We did in the neighborhood of 2,000 plants that day. The folks you see here are volunteers from The Village.
To the left is our Ranger biologist-extraordinaire. Her efforts can be seen almost everywhere you look. But everything looks so natural you wouldn't know it.
The fishing clubs are very excited about the aquatic habitats she is developing and the pollinator organizations are thrilled with the pollinator plant "farming".
However she is not alone in the endeavor. An operation this big doesn't happen without support from headquarters.
Did I mention that the lake bed was not exposed everywhere plantings had to go? 😄
The fishing clubs aren't the only ones happy about the fish attractor plants.
When we meet people and they learn that we are fulltimers (which usually takes some explaining) and that we are year-'round volunteers, the next thing they want to know is "what does that mean, what do you do?" The above ramblings kind of form an idea of what we 'do'. I think I have an idea of how to write my next posting.
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