Goodbye summer!

Happy Sunday, and a big congratulations to everyone who finished their first week back at school :)

I took a little break from the blog last week, because I was busy driving back to Victoria from Ontario! So, this week will be a special ‘end-of-summer’ edition of the ccg blog! 

The last week of August was another busy one here. We held our last Wednesday work party of the summer, as we’re going back to once-a-week work parties on Fridays during the school year! Volunteers helped with getting plots ready for new renters, because it’s plot renewal season and we have some new renters coming into the space. So if you see anyone around the garden who looks new, say hi! 

Another exciting thing that happened this week was the Farm Crawl! On Friday, August 30th, we teamed up with the UVic Sustainability Project and the Community Action Bus to put on this awesome event! We traveled around on the big blue bus, stopping at Haliburton Farm, Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse, and the CCG, to learn about farming and food systems in our community. We had an absolute blast with everyone, and we are excited to continue this event in the coming years!
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This past week was also jam packed for us, as the start of the school year always is! We kicked off the week on Monday tabling at the Residence Move-In Fair, where we gave out flowers from the garden and introduced ourselves to a whole bunch of new students! 

On Thursday evening we held our last Poetry Picnic of the season, featuring Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi. We had a packed audience for the last one, and filled our open mic lineup too! It’s been so wonderful to see the Poetry Picnics grow over the summer, and this season finale ended the summer on such a sweet note! Thank you to everyone who’s come out, whether to participate or just listen. We love to use the garden space for non-garden events and activities, and it’s always so great to see how vibrant and creative our community is!
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On Friday we spent the day tabling at Thunderfest, and we met SO many people!! Some of our staff did some harvesting in the morning, so we had lots of food and flowers to share with folks, as well as a sneak-peak at some upcoming Fall events! We’ve also had our second-edition of Sundew available for purchase at our tabling events for sliding-scale $2-10, and the sales have been going super well!
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Speaking of which, I wanted to remind everyone that submissions for our third-edition of Sundew (coming out in November) are open now! They’ll be open all month, so if you have any pieces of writing, or art, or anything really, send em our way! Our website has more information about submitting, so check it out here if you’re interested!

We also held our first work party of the school year on Friday afternoon, and had some new faces come out to volunteer. Our official “Welcome Work Party” is next Friday, September 13th, from 2-4pm and we expect to see lots of new people there! If you’ve been thinking about coming to a work party, this will be a great intro one - grab your friends and come spend an afternoon learning some new skills, meeting new people, and getting your hands dirty!
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Coming up, we’ve got tons more tabling this week! We’ll be at CCU Days on Wednesday and Thursday, and at the Mental Health Resource Fair on Friday! If you have any questions, want to learn more about the ccg, or just want to say hey, stop by. We can’t wait to meet you!

That’s all from me for now, I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend!

Happy gardening,
Jessi