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And just like that we’re almost two weeks into August! July was a wonderful month at the CCG - the weather was good, everything has been growing well, and we had tons of fun! Between our events, board meetings, and regular garden shenanigans it was a packed month, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way! This summer has been incredible so far, and it feels like the community around the garden grows a little bigger and better each day. Before I get into the recap, I just want to say thank you for being here and for being a part of this community! It’s been so special to get to be part of the garden, and what really makes it special is the people<3 The beginning of the month honestly feels like a lifetime ago!! I can’t believe it was only a few weeks ago that we held our Farm Crawl with the UVic Sustainability Project and the Community Action Bus. We had so much fun riding the bus around and learning about different farms! We visited Haliburton Farm and did some volunteering, went to Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse to learn about cider making and eat lunch, and then toured the CCG! It was a fantastic day - I missed last year’s farm crawl so being here this year was a real treat! On July 10th we had a special open mic night in the garden featuring not one but TWO bands: Filthy Blonde and Savy! The turnout was even better than we’d expected, and we had such a fun time singing and dancing along all night! I say this all the time, but it really is so so so wonderful to get to share the space with so many lovely people - the garden shines her brightest when there is community around :-) We also ~finally~ got the “Campus Community Garden” sign back up on the outside of our fence (facing Mckenzie Ave). This was a long time coming type of project, and we’re so happy with how it looks! Now, when folks are walking by the garden they can tell what it is that’s behind the hedgerow!  The biweekly knitting circle has continued to go strong - stronger even now that we’ve moved to a 1.5hr circle (1 hour was NOT enough!). Knitting circles are every second Monday night from 6:30-8pm, and the next one is on Monday, August 18th! At the end of July we put on a new kind of event for the garden, a tattoo event! As part of our open mic event on Thursday, July 24th we had tattoos and mehendi being done. A few months ago we reached out to the lovely folks at The Brass Iris Studio to see if they would be interested in creating a ccg-themed flash sheet and putting on an event with us. They worked with us to come up with ideas, and created an assortment of designs for everyone! We also had our wonderful board member, Priyanka, doing mehendi for folks who wanted a non-permanent option or were just interested in something else! On top of all this, we had Vikes Improv providing endless laughs and fun. This was SUCH an awesome event, and we’re so excited that folks were interested in keeping a little bit of the garden with them forever :-) Our volunteer work parties (drop-in weekly volunteer times) have continued to run twice a week through July, and will keep being on Wednesday evenings (5-7pm) and Friday afternoons (2-4pm) through August! It’s been lovely to have new folks showing up, and we’re really excited to keep meeting new people as we get closer to the school year! If you’re interested in volunteering with the CCG, come out to a work party! Looking forward, August is a big month! We’ve got lots of prep for the school year going on, and some big changes are coming to the garden at the end of the month (stay tuned for that). It’s been such a wonderful summer so far, and we’re excited to see what the rest of the month has in store!
‘Till then, happy gardening! Jessi
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It’s hard to believe how quickly the last two months have gone by, but here we are at the end of June already! Summer is officially here, and while the weather in Victoria hasn’t quite gotten the memo yet, the plants in the garden certainly have! I was away for the month of May, and coming back to the garden at the start of June was such a treat! Everything has been growing lots, there are so many more colours and smells around, and the community is thriving. It’s been so special to be able to spend more time in the garden, caring for the space, meeting more plot renters and members of the community, and seeing the fruits of our collective labour blossoming! June has been busy of course, but in a way that feels nourishing - busy with fun events, new projects, time outdoors, and getting our hands in the dirt! The summer really is the best time to be in the garden (obviously), and it feels so good to be around for it this year :) The first thing I want to talk about is actually something that happened at the end of May, but since I wasn’t here it feels okay to extend this blog a bit further back! Our Assistant Coordinator, Juls, has been working on an exciting project called Paper and Pigment: Locating book arts in the physical environment. This project was dreamed up a few months ago by our friend Heather Dean from Special Collections, and it explores the art and science of paper and pigments. As part of the project, we’re growing flax in the garden which will be harvested and turned into paper! The flax was planted in May, and has been growing super well! We’ve been able to do this project thanks to a grant from the Seed Fund, which you can learn more about, as well as about our project, here. Another exciting thing that’s been going on this summer is that a knitting circle started in the garden! Our friends at kinglet qmunity knitting have been hosting a bi-weekly knitting circle on Monday evenings from 6:30-7:30pm, and it’s been so lovely!! We share snacks, chat, share knitting/crochet tips and tricks, and overall just enjoy each others’ company while spending time in the garden! If you’d like to join, the next one will be on Monday, July 7th! We’ve also been hosting weekly open mics in the garden on Thursdays! These have been a mix of bigger events and smaller sing-alongs, and they have all been wonderful! We had a special one to celebrate the completion of the Tiny House build supporting Gitxsan resistance against the PRGT pipeline at the end of May, a Community Cabbage serve at the beginning of June, and a bunch of fun special guests! Because we have some other big events going on over the next couple weeks, the next open mic night will be on Thursday, July 10th!! Come out to perform, or just to hang out and catch our featured bands Savy and Filthy Blonde! Everyone is welcome!!  This month we also opened submissions to the summer editions of both the CCG Mixtape and Sundew! Sundew is the garden journal, a collection of writing, recipes, drawings, collages, photos, and anything really! Submissions close on July 31st, so there’s lots of time to work on things/pick out a finished piece that you might want to share. When the submissions are in, we have a collaging party to collage the issue together, and then have it printed! You can find more information about Sundew on our website here.  The CCG Mixtape is a collaborative sound project that we started in the winter, and have decided to do a summer version! We’re looking for everything, from music, to spoken-word poetry, to stories, conversations, jokes, or just random noises! When the submissions are in, we’ll make a cover, burn physical CDs, and have a special presentation of the mixtape on CFUV! They’ll be available to purchase by donation, with 50% of proceeds going to the DULF Legal Fund. Submissions close on August 15th, and you can learn more on our website here! Another exciting thing that happened this month is that we collaborated with a Sustainability in Marketing class. A few months ago the professor reached out to us about having his students do a project focused on the campus community garden, and we were excited to explore a new kind of student collaboration for us! At the beginning of June, we hosted a tour for the students so they could familiarize themselves with the garden and ask us questions. Then they worked in groups to come up with suggestions to address some of the marketing-related issues we face at the garden. This week, a couple members of the staff went into the class to listen to the students present their ideas! This was a great experience for us, the students had lots of great ideas and we were able to connect with a bunch of new folks who hadn’t been to the garden before! We’re always open to collaborations or tours with classes, so if you know of any classes that might fit with the work of the garden please reach out to us :) We’ve done a bunch already this summer, but we’ve still got lots and lots of fun things coming up too! Tonight (June 27th) is one of our favourite events of the summer, Gay in the Garden! This is an annual collaboration between the garden, the Pride Collective, and the Gender Empowerment Centre that is always a blast! Come to the garden between 6-9pm for music, food, games, an open mic, and more! Entry is by cash donation to Rainbow Railroad.  Next Friday, July 4th, is another of our favourite events - the Farm Crawl!! This is an old collaboration that returned last summer between the CCG, the UVic Sustainability Project, and the Community Action Bus! This all-day event begins at the CCG, where we’ll board the blue bus to head to Haliburton Farm for a tour and some hands-on farmwork, then back on the bus to Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse for a tour and lunch. We’ll then return to the CCG for our last tour of the day and a closing circle! I’m really looking forward to this one, which I was very sad to miss last year! The weather is supposed to be pretty nice (crossing my fingers!), and it will be so nice to explore some new places.  Volunteer work days will continue to be every week on Wednesdays from 5-7pm and Fridays from 2-4pm for now, but we may end up pushing Fridays back an hour to 3pm if it starts getting hot in the afternoons! As always, keep an eye on our Instagram for updates about volunteering, events, and everything going on in the garden :)
Thanks for reading this little blog! If you have any questions about the CCG or any of the things we’ve been up to, feel free to send me an email at [email protected]! I’m also starting to think about workshops and events for the fall, so if you have any ideas of things you’d like us to explore please, please let me know!! Happy gardening, Jessi This is a combo blog from March and April (aka I sat down to write the March blog and all of a sudden it became the end of April) - the last few months have flown by!! March was a busy month at the CCG! On top of the obvious arrival of spring, and all the garden work that comes with the new season, we also ran a referendum question and hosted our annual spring celebration! The garden was buzzing with activity in March, with more folks around and lots of preparing for the growing season happening! We started crops, sowed seeds, got our compost re-started, and planned for our growing over the summer. It’s shaping up to be a great summer at the garden - the whole team will be around and we’ve got lots of big plans! In March we also ran a referendum question during the UVSS Election! We asked students to vote yes to increase our fees by $1.50 per full-time student and $0.75 per part-time student, so that the garden can keep growing! The campaign was a lot of work (shoutout to our Assistant Coordinator, Juls, who took the lead on this!!), but in the end students voted yes to our increase! At the end of the month, we held our annual spring celebration in the garden. This year, we hosted a Spring Market with vendors, live music, games, snacks, and even face painting! We were worried about the weather leading up to the event (it was supposed to rain!) but it ended up being a gorgeous, sunny afternoon! Our vendors were awesome (I think all the staff ended up buying something haha), the musicians were all so talented, and it was so sweet to see so many people enjoying themselves in the space! These pictures were taken by a pal of the garden, you can find him on Instagram @dawson.erskine April has also been a busy one! Everyone was working to finish things up for school, while keeping up with the planting, weeding, harvesting, and general preparing of the garden. In particular, we’ve been planting lots of peas, radishes, and greens! We also made a tayberry trellis at our work party last week! One of the main things that happened this month is that we’re back to twice-a-week work parties now, on Wednesdays from 5-7pm and Fridays from 2-4pm! This means we’ve got two opportunities a week to volunteer in the garden - work parties are drop-in style (no signups, stay as long as you’d like), and are open to any and all levels of experience! We’ve normally got a main task going on, but always have alternatives available for different energy levels and comforts :)
We’ve got big plans for the summer in terms of events and workshops, and have spent a lot of time in April getting these planned! One of the things I’m most excited for is that we’re expanding on the poetry picnics that we ran last summer, and doing a weekly garden open mic! This will be on Thursday evenings starting in May! Every second week, we’ll also have a featured act (musician, poet, etc). Check out our Instagram to keep updated about these, and reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions! Another thing that I’m excited for is the big events that we do over the summer! Favourites like Gay in the Garden, the Farm Crawl, and Live Music Fest are in the works so keep an eye out… We’re also going to be doing more community get-togethers this summer, which are a casual, potluck style hangout with the ccg community. We had such a lovely time doing these in the fall, and are excited to connect with folks over the summer! Overall, we’re excited to be growing food, connecting with our community, and playing around in the garden this summer! If you have any ideas for events that you’d like to see over the summer, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] so we can chat :) Finally, just a quick reminder from staff to please clean the dirt off your tools when you’re done using them! Dirt causes rust which can be avoided by using the brushes (usually on top of the mini fridge in the tool shed) to wipe off the dirt. Thanks!!! Happy gardening, Jessi Today’s the last day of February, but the weather feels like we’re already well into March! These last couple days of sunshine and warmer temperatures have me sooo excited for the spring, especially with all the exciting things going on in the garden over the next few months :-) February was a big month at the garden - we had lots of fun things going on, and did lots of planning for the upcoming growing season! It’s been an awesome month of working as a team and supporting one another to get things done, and I’m feeling so grateful for this community for coming out to our events and workshops, participating in our silly little projects, and overall just being such a lovely group to be a part of. The month started off with some snow and freezing temperatures, which meant that we were mostly spending our time working indoors instead of in the garden (it’s hard to work in the frozen ground!). Our first workshop of the month was our microgreens workshop, which was originally going to be held on February 4th, but got moved to the 11th as UVic was closed because of the snow. This was an introductory workshop, hosted by our garden site staff member, Jack. We learned about what microgreens are, how to grow different kinds of microgreens, and even got to grow our own! Once the temperatures rose a bit we were back in the garden, and back to holding our Friday volunteer parties outdoors! We’ve had some awesome work parties this month, doing lots of weeding and cover cropping as we come to the end of the winter. Work parties have continued to be drop-in style on Friday afternoons from 2-4pm, no sign-ups or experience is needed to join! Just come by anytime between 2-4 to lend a hand and hang out in the garden. Keep an eye on our Instagram to stay up-to-date with work party tasks and times. Another exciting thing that happened this month is that the latest edition of Sundew came together! Some printing issues have delayed the official release, but keep an eye out for that this week!! We also finished putting together our silly little mixtape this month! The CCG winter mixtape has been one of the most fun projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on in my time with the garden - together with our star board member, Clare! The mixtape started as a random, silly what-if, and has turned into a beautiful documentation of the sounds of our community. It starts off with the sound of the gate to the garden opening and closing, and moves into a wide range of pieces, from stories to songs to a recipe, all coming together to represent the garden and the people who make it what it is. We launched the mixtape live on CFUV on Feb 25th, and the recording will be up on our website soon, but you can also get your hands on a real physical copy of the mixtape! We’re burning a limited number of CDs, we have cover art (2 versions!), and we’re selling them by donation!! 50% of proceeds will go to the garden, and 50% will go to our friends at Peers. You can find the mixtape at our table at FemExpo this week, or send us a message and we can figure out a time to drop by our office in the SUB to pick one up :) We also hosted a miso-making workshop this week, led by garden plot-renter James! Folks learned about the individual ingredients that go into making miso, the different kinds of miso, and worked together to make a big batch of miso which we split between the group so that everyone could take some home! Now, we leave our containers of miso in a cool, dark place for 3 months, and see how it’s doing at the end of May. This is definitely one that we want to do again, so if you missed it this time keep an eye out for another miso-making workshop in the fall! Coming up in March, we’ll be bringing back our pop-up giveaways, finishing up with some final touches for the new accessible bed, selling Sundew and the mixtape, and preparing for this year’s spring event in the garden! This year we’re changing things up a bit and hosting a Spring Market! Plan to come by the garden on the afternoon of March 28th (the last Friday in March), where there will be vendors (ranging from local farms and gardens to artists and makers), live music, and good vibes all around!! Keep an eye on our Instagram for more details :) I hope you all have a chance to enjoy the sunshine this weekend, and wishing you all the best for March!
Happy gardening, Jessi Welcome back to the blog! For this semester, we’ve decided to change things up a bit and move to monthly blogs instead of weekly! January has been a slower month at the CCG - with some staffing changes and the winter season, we’ve taken the time to ease back into things this semester. The main change is that our beloved Coordinator Lyndsay is away for a few months, doing some courses up island. We’ve missed her a lot, but are so excited about her new adventure! In the meantime, the rest of the team has taken on additional tasks :) We’ve also been focusing a lot of our work on planning and preparing for the coming growing season, and have just returned to working in the garden after our time away during the long moon. During this time, we give the land a break, and give all the living things in the garden the space to grow and thrive. We’re very excited to be back now though, and can’t wait to start seeing our plans in action! On the outreach side, we’ve had lots of things going on this month. Between tabling events and workshops, we’ve had so much fun introducing new people to the garden, and hanging out with some familiar faces! This month we had two Thursday afternoon events with the Society for Students with a Disability (SSD), one focused on tea making and the other on seed saving! We’ll be bringing these back again on February 13th and 27th, so check out our Instagram if you’re interested :)  We also worked with our friends (and office-mates!) at the UVic Sustainability Project (UVSP) to put on a container gardening & seed bomb workshop! It’s always so fun to put on events with our friends!!  We’ve continued to host our volunteer work parties on Friday afternoons this semester, and had our first outdoor one since last semester today! It was a rainy day, but it’s always a fun time to be in the garden with pals! We’ll be continuing to do these from 2-4pm for the next little while, and then might move to 3-5pm when the sun is up for longer :) We’ve got lots coming up in February too! We’ve been working hard to get the new edition of Sundew ready, which will come out this month. We hosted a couple of collaging sessions for this one, and it’s looking really awesome! We’ve also been working away at our mixtape, and are excited to launch it on CFUV on February 25th! Coming up next week, we have our Microgreens 101 workshop with Jack! This will be an introduction to growing microgreens indoors, which Jack does in our office in the SUB. Come down to SUB B028 at 2pm on Tuesday, Feb 4th if you’re interested in learning!  We’re also planning a miso-making workshop for the end of the month! On February 26th, our friend (and plot-renter!) James will be joining us in the SUB to teach us all about making miso! Keep an eye on our Instagram for more details closer to the event :)
We’re also hoping to bring back our pop-up giveaways soon, so lookout for that this month! Happy gardening, Jessi The first week of exams is already over, which means we’re that much closer to winter break! Here at the CCG, we’ve been busy continuing to get ready for the break by finishing up tasks and projects, and making sure that we’ve set ourselves up to come back ready to go in the new year. On Tuesday we had our Board of Directors’ Holiday Get-Together, where we shared food and held a gift exchange! It’s a busy time for our board members, and we appreciate everyone for taking the time out of their exam studying to join us! Our bi-weekly board meetings will start up again in the new year, so if you’re interested in being a part of the board keep an eye on our Instagram for information about our meetings :) On Wednesday, a little group of us spent some more time working on the accessible bed! We’re getting to the final stages of this project, and are really looking forward to seeing the end result! The building part should be done before the break, and then we’ll be testing it and putting the final touches on to get ready to unveil the bed later in the Spring.  Today we held our usual Friday afternoon work party! This week’s focus was on weeding, mulching, and other winter preparations! This was our last work party before the long moon, starting on Dec. 15. For about a month, we give the land time to rest and will be doing alternative tasks at the work parties that don’t involve disturbing the ground. Check out our Instagram to keep up to date with work parties :)  I’m keeping it short and sweet this week, so that’s all I’ve got! Good luck to everyone finishing up exams next week, I’m right there with you!
And as always, happy gardening! Jessi The end of the semester is very near! I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to a break over the holidays. This semester went by so quickly and has had so many things packed in, which has been wonderful but also very tiring! I think we all could use a rest! The last day of classes was on Wednesday, so we had our usual activities for the first part of the week! On Tuesday evening we had our last regular board meeting of the semester, where we chatted about what needs to be done before the holidays and worked on some projects that will be public next semester. To end off the year together, we’re having a little holiday celebration with the board next week!
This week we also announced our first themed issue of the garden journal, Sundew! For the winter issue, we’ve decided to go with the theme “Food for All”. We welcome all interpretations of the theme! Some suggestions/prompts might be thinking about food accessibility and barriers to access (like geographical, financial, etc.), food as part of culture and community, food as a human right, etc. but we really love different interpretations so please feel free to make it your own! The deadline to submit is December 31 :) And now we’re in exam time (womp womp). It definitely feels like everyone is hunkering down to get ready, and there’s a lot of end-of-year preparations and celebrations happening as well. Because of the busy time of year, we decided to cancel our work party this afternoon. We just don’t have anyone who was available to stay for the whole time, and figured it might be a good time to take a little break. Folks are still welcome to gather in the space, of course, and we’ll have gloves and whatnot available for anyone who wants to do some work! Next week, we’re planning to finish up the accessible bed, have our holiday celebration with the board, and continue with getting the garden ready for winter. Accepting submissions for both Sundew and the CCG Winter Mixtape will also be ongoing throughout the month!  That’s all from me for this week, wishing everyone good luck with your exams and final assignments! We’re almost there!!
Happy gardening, Jessi It’s almost December and I can’t believe it! November has been a super busy month at the CCG - it went by quickly but when I think about it, we were able to fit so many things in! From events, to special projects, to so much winter prep. in the garden and in the office. We’ve been working hard and working as a team, working together to make things happen and leaning on each other when we need support. I think that’s probably a big factor in how we’ve been able to do so many different things this month, so today I’m going to recap some of our team’s work from this month! One of my favourite things we started doing this month is our pop-up giveaways! If you haven’t seen, we’ve been doing once a week pop-ups around campus (mostly outside of the SUB), where we’ve been giving away free veggies, flowers, seeds, and stickers from the CCG. This has been such a great team effort, where every week staff and board members agree on a day where some folks are available to help with harvesting in the morning, and some are available to table during the day to give the harvest away. For last week’s blog, I spotlighted this project (in case you want to read more about it!). We haven’t decided on a day for this week yet, but check our Instagram to keep up to date :) We also released our newest edition of Sundew (the garden journal)! This is our third edition and we are so happy with how this project has been going. Sundew is a great example of how teamwork really does make things happen here; from the submissions to the collaging, Sundew is a collective effort (led by our lovely Assistant Coordinator, Juls!). The third edition is now available for a sliding scale price of $2-10, if you’d like to buy a copy you can send us a message on Instagram or email Juls at [email protected]. They’re also available for purchase at Subtext for $10! Then, of course, there’s the accessible bed building that’s been going on this month! This whole project would not be possible without the work of so many different folks, from the original decision to remove the old (in)accessible bed, to the creation of a new design (because we couldn’t find any design plans for what we were looking for!), and finally the actual building, it’s been such an incredible journey full of learning. If it weren’t for the effort of everyone involved, this project would be nowhere near where it is now, and it’s so awesome to see what we can do together<3 In the garden, this month has been focused on getting ready for winter! We’ve been harvesting as much as we can, mulching around the hardy plants (like leafy greens and leeks) that are overwintering (tucking them into their mulch beds, as Kate says :p), pruning, tidying, making little structures (like a cover for the sink by the composting toilet), and all the other things that need to be done! The in-garden things are less talked about on the blog (mostly because I’m not usually the one doing them!) but they’re, of course, a huge chunk of where our staff’s time goes! This month we also held our Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM), two tea-making workshops with the Society for Students with a Disability, a quick-pickling workshop, and five work parties! It’s been so awesome to see our community grow as we meet more folks who are interested in being part of the CCG, whether it’s volunteering with us, coming to our workshops, or coming by the pop-ups to get some free food! Looking forward, we’ve got some more exciting things coming up for December. We’ll be accepting submissions for Sundew Issue 4 (our first themed issue - keep an eye on our Instagram for the theme reveal!), as well as for a new project, the first-ever CCG winter mixtape! We’ll be continuing to hold work parties on Friday afternoons between 2-4pm, having a few more pop-ups (total number will depend on our capacity around exams), and finishing up with building the accessible bed! We’ll be taking a little break over the holidays, and then will be back in January with more workshops, events, and projects :)  That’s it from me for this week, I hope everyone has a wonderful start of December!
Happy gardening, Jessi This week on the blog, I’ve decided to switch it up a bit! Rather than recap our week, I’ll be doing a spotlight on an ongoing project that we’ve been working on - our pop-up giveaways around campus! The giveaways are based on an initiative that the CCG used to do (pre-covid), where the farm stand would be set up somewhere on campus to give away free food! One of our board members, Liam, heard about this from one of our volunteers who’s been around the garden for a while, and brought the idea to a board meeting in the fall. As you may recall, our farm stand was broken in September, so at first we were trying to fix the stand before we started the giveaways. We realized that fixing the farm stand is a project that we’d have to come back to in the Spring, but we still wanted to do giveaways, so we decided to just start booking a table and doing pop-ups! The way it works is that we pick a day/time in the week that works for at least a couple of board members and staff, book a table and a few chairs, then schedule a harvest for the morning of the giveaway and someone to bike everything over from the garden to the table. At the table, we give everything away for free to anyone who comes by! That’s it! No catch, no sign-ups, and folks can choose to chat with us or just grab something quickly on their way by! We’re just thrilled to be able to give more food away and let more people know about the garden and all the things we offer - a space to garden (whether renting plots or volunteering with us), a space to enjoy (everyone is welcome to walk around when the gate’s unlocked, and groups can use the space for free for events and get-togethers), and a space that exists on the belief that food should be shared (as well as accessible, decolonized, and joyful). Staff operate plots specifically for the purpose of giving food for free, and we love to be able to do that through the UVSS Food Bank and the tabling events we attend around campus, but it’s also been so awesome to have the opportunity to connect more directly with the people we are growing food for.
And on that note, we want to hear from you! Is there something you think we should grow in the garden? Let us know! We’re starting to plan our garden for next season, and we’d love to look into different foods you want access to, especially if they’re not commonly found in grocery stores in Victoria! We’d love to work with you, if you’re interested in gardening yourself, or just think about how we can add new things to the plots that we run already. You can chat with us at the giveaway tables, come by the garden, send us a message on Instagram, or email me at [email protected]. We’ll be back out next week for another pop-up, but haven’t settled on a date quite yet. Keep an eye on our Instagram to stay updated on our giveaways and other work that we do! Happy gardening, Jessi This week was a bit of a weird one, because the first half of the week was reading break for UVic. Here at the garden we were off on Monday and then back to it for the rest of the week, but it always throws off my internal calendar when I don’t have classes! On Tuesday and Friday we were in the garden continuing work on the new accessible bed, which is coming along slowly but surely! We’ve been learning a lot, and making adjustments as we go to improve the structure and solve problems as we run into them. We’re just about done with the actual building, and are starting to focus on the ground (holding the structure in place, and making sure the ground is level and compacted/covered so that a wheelchair user will actually be able to access the bed!). We’ll be back in the garden this week to continue working, and hopefully will be able to finish with the big things so that we can move on to testing and making smaller adjustments! Classes returned after the break on Thursday, and we kicked off the 2-day week with another on-campus giveaway! This time, we set up a table outside of the McPherson Library, near the Petch Fountain, to give away veggies, berries, and edible flowers from the garden, as well as seeds! We did a harvest in the morning, and were set up at the table from 10am-noon. The giveaways have been going super well and it’s been so nice to connect more with the UVic community - we’ve been able to meet folks who’d never heard of the garden before, and remind others that we’re here and they have access to a garden space (even though we’re kind of hidden off Mackenzie Ave!). Keep an eye on our Instagram stories to find out about the next giveaway! On Friday, as well as working on the accessible bed, we introduced some new plot renters to their plots and held a volunteer work party in the afternoon! This week’s work party continued to focus on winterizing garden beds, as it really is that time of year - we had our first frost on Thursday night, and are expecting a couple more this week! Looking forward, we’ve got a busy week coming up. On Monday, our highly anticipated Quick Pickling workshop will be taking place from 11am-1pm in SUB B028! Don’t forget to bring a jar (clean it thoroughly first!!), and maybe some veggies and spices like garlic, dill, or pepper flakes, if you have some you prefer!  On Tuesday afternoon at 3pm in SUB B025 we’re also holding our Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM)!! This will take the shape of a community potluck and meeting, where we recap our year and discuss plans for the next year! This meeting is open to everyone in our community, to come and join garden staff and board members in sharing food, celebrating what we’ve accomplished over the past year, and planning for the next. We’re asking folks to please bring something to share for the potluck, as well as your own dishes/utensils for eating :)  We’ll also have our usual Friday volunteer work party from 2-4pm on Friday, November 22nd! Come by to help out with some garden tasks (probably more winterizing!), meet some awesome folks, and spend some time outdoors. We’ve been super lucky with the weather for the past few weeks, and hopefully this continues - but we’re out rain or shine, so dress for the weather and come hang out!!
I hope everyone has had a great weekend, and I wish you all the best for the coming week! Happy gardening, Jessi |
