Yesterday the Peterborough Community Garden Network and Nourish hosted a fun, outdoor, community garden party at St Andrew's United Church to celebrate Earth Day and mark the conclusion of the 7 Days of Green.
This was a perfect day to be outside. I could feel that spring was finally settling in. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and the air gave us a soupçon of future warmth to come.
In the early afternoon, community members started to drop by the garden to check out the activities. We brought platters of kale dishes: kale chips, kale hummus, kale hors d'oeuvre on beds of cucumbers and a couple of kale salads. We planted a row of kale seeds, raked the garden, got rid of the last remnant of snow and wrote some well wishes and hopeful messages about the growing season.
The party took place on the grounds of St Andrew's United Church. We purposefully selected that site since this is where our new Taste of Nourish is going to be launched. Taste of Nourish programs seek to build community and address barriers for participation. As a result, Nourish is working on adding some new features in the St Andrew's garden. In the next few weeks, we will see the inclusion of several raised beds as well as a new enabling allotment garden space for gardeners with disabilities. We are also planning to offer gardening workshops which will focus on ways to create a barrier-free garden, as well as adapting gardening tools for varying abilities.
If you are a gardener with a disability and want to join the St Andrew's community garden, email us at nourish@ywcapeterborough.org.
Members of the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough attended the Garden Party and announced that they were going to make a $1,000 contribution to the Green Up's endowment fund in recognition of the dynamic environmental work that the agency has been carrying forward in our community for the past 20 years. This announcement was a fitting conclusion to a wonderful week of green activities.
Finally I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Foundation for launching these 7 days of green. They enabled me to think about our Nourish work through the new lens of ... green dating. I don't think I would have gone there on my own, but there it is... Nourish is now promoting a polyamorous relationship... Who would have thought?
