Summer Breeze...and the living is easy

Wow, what a fabulous evening for our last summer work party. It was a sultry night with a lovely summer breeze, a gorgeous sky and one could almost forget that September is just around the corner. Many thanks to Keven and Brandi - our work party coordinators who kindly contributed drinks and donuts to keep us going and kept us track with all the various chores for the evening. This included weeding all the common areas, getting the compost ship shape, pruning the raspberry bushes, re-aligning the west ruhbarb border, trimming back the cottonwood suckers, edging, cleaning up the back area behind the shed, and stringing up the raspberry bushes. Whew!

Enjoy the rest of our summer and see you at our next fall (sigh) work party in September.

'Almost Summer' Work Party #5!

We were lucky with the weather for our 5th work party of the season - with our home made potluck goodies plus the generous contribution of our local Capers. Although it looked like a lot of food - amazingly it was all gone by the end of the party! Homemade highlights included a scrummy noodle salad, decadent chocolates, an elegant mango mousse... and more. Capers provided tons of lovely sandwiches, a loaded fruit plate, veggie plate with dip, potato chips and drinks. I am writing this at dinner time so I guess I better focus less on the food (I'm hungry!) and more on how much work we got done that was on our chore list!

Not in any particular order, we...

...reorganized the tool shed (nice and neat now!)...weeded all the common areas including the front boulevard, west boulevard, hobbit tree, salad and kiwi garden and in front of the tool shed...cleared up the front boulevard of overgrown plants and revealed

our beautiful path... put up some more bird houses on the hobbit tree...

... pruned our suffering fruit trees (need more sun!)... clipped and defined our common

garden edges (looks so good!)... beautified the terracotta garden at the back... ah... the compost... emptied out the black bins and reloaded and layered into the main composters... a special plea lovely gardeners - can everyone try harder at cutting up the green into small pieces before depositing into the compost bins? Of course compost duties included filtering and providing a lovely big bin of finished compost for everyone's garden (the one to the very left). If I have forgotten anything - let me know!

Thanks to the members who showed up for the party including little Lola, Charlie and B!

See you next time at our Wednesday, August 24th Work Party - 7pm to 9pm.

If you have a garden and a library you have everything that you need. ~ Cicero

Ban on Goutweed

Thanks to all the members who contributed to our May work party, led by our WPC Amy - and special thanks to little Jack, Charlie and Lola - our doggie members (Biscuit stayed home to catch up on his napping!). The Ban on Goutweed is underway and some great progress was made on the front boulevard to get rid of this pesky weed. The compost was turned and finished black gold distributed...fabulous new steps and entrance in front of the new west gate were designed and installed, and general weeding was done throughout the garden. A good start was made to creating a new compost screener with leftover wood from the fence project and the grass was cut. Our day ended with our neighbourhood Whole Food's generous repast of sandwiches, chips, vegetables & dip and fruit as well as home made Jerusalem Artichoke snacks - yum.

Fence Extravaganza

A huge thank you to the volunteers on the Fence Committee and who contributed a ton of their personal time last weekend to create the new fence. It is a huge improvement that adds to the whole experience of being in the Kits Community Garden. The fun began on Friday when the old fence was torn down. Then the new fence work started on Saturday at 8:30 a.m.! The layout and posts were installed on Saturday and the volunteers had a short lunch break after working up a huge appetite and then got back to work for the remainder of the day. Luckily Suzanne at our local Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company in Kits generously donated 4 large pizzas for the crew - which were absolutely scrumptious. As they say, hunger is a good sauce and every single piece was devoured - 4 or 5 pieces each! We were also really lucky with the weather - no rain. Sunday was also very busy as the new pickets were installed and all the junk hauled away. A special thank you to Rob our project manager, who had us all focused and working on various tasks to get everything done and who also arranged the purchase and delivery of all of the materials and equipment that were needed - including his own personal power saw (who knew?). I personally feel the auger was the coolest tool in the whole process! It was a lot of work but also lots of fun with lots of laughter and camaraderie. Enjoy the pictures from the weekend - and of course our beautiful new fence and two gates.

April Showers...

You know what they say... April showers bring forth May flowers... and I can't wait! The trend for work parties in the Kits Garden continues with a small but dedicated crew showing up. Thanks to the members who braved the pouring rain and COLD today to continue our preparations for the season.

Amy was our work party coordinator and she had us all busy getting rid of weeds and doing a great clean up of the shed and a fab job of screening and distributing the compost to the community beds. Our local Capers provided lunch which we all enjoyed under an improvised tarp! The extra fruit and vegetable trays were donated to the local Seniors Center.

For those members who could not attend today please consider helping out the Fence Committee members who are generously volunteering their time next weekend to build our exciting new fence which will

be a huge improvement to our garden. The fun starts on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. and will probably go into Sunday as well. ---> Contact David or Alison for details.

KCG 2011 Kick Off!

The Kits Garden members had their 1st work party of the 2011 season on Saturday, March 12th. Considering the unseasonably cold weather and RAIN, it was a great turn out. The compost bins were screened to get all the hard non-compostable bits out (please remember you should not be putting hard branches, sticks, etc in the bins) so there is some black gold to be had! The hobbit tree was spruced up and all the common areas were weeded and cleaned up. It should be a fantastic year for everyone now that more sunshine will be streaming in with the removal of the cotton wood trees. Let the sun shine (please). Pizza was served at the conclusion of our work party which was nice and warming. Next work party we will have our usual Capers goodies - so looking forward to that and to see how much is starting to happen in the garden.

Happy New Year! AGM January 29th

Happy New Year everyone. A reminder that the annual 2011 AGM is on the weekend and spring is definitely in the air! It will be an exciting new season because the ginormous cotton wood trees were removed in the late fall so all the yummy sunshine and water will benefit our plots instead of the greedy old trees. Here is a snap taken right after the trees were removed to inspire you for the upcoming season.