A gorgeous planter near the entrance of the Administration Building of the National Arboretum. Below are beets that I helped sow in the Washington Youth Garden just three weeks ago. Rows are labeled with pieces of old vinyl blinds.
A few other sights around the Washington Youth Garden on this very hot early summer day...
Things were smelling as good as they were looking - and I'm not just talking about the rosemary shrub we were weeding around. A local chef was doing an outdoor cooking demonstration for some WYG families. Can you smell the freshly harvested garlic sauteing in the pan?
Today's duties for the volunteers consisted mostly of taking care of the Bermuda grass - pulling, covering with cardboard, mulching...not fun, but like all weeding tasks, somewhat fulfilling as well. Here are some of us, sweaty but proud of how things in the perennial border look. I'm in the red shirt.
Here's Mamoi weeding (sorry - I'm spelling his name phonetically because I can't remember the proper spelling!). I learned the most interesting thing from him today. We were talking about bamboo when he mentioned having seen bamboo seeds in his country. He said that unfortunately, seeds bring poverty and famine (to which I was very confused). I did a little research on this later on and here's the explanation in short: Bamboo flowers/seeds about once every 100 years. There is actually a mass flowering of a certain type of bamboo, regardless of location or region. Due to the mass fruit/seed production, the rodent population booms. This boom in the population also means they will eat whatever is available, including food stores and farm crops. Many of these pestilent rodents also carry disease. Now if that's not enough, after the mass flowering, the bamboo dies. This is a huge loss of a natural resource used for building material, floors, furniture, many other products and for trade. All this could be really devastating to many countries that are just barely making it anyway.
Anyway, in addition to the knowledge I always gain from either the WYG staff or other volunteers, this week I also gained a fresh bulb of garlic! This is no small token for my 3 hours of labor on a 95 degree day because have you seen my garlic stock? Me neither but 8 months ago, it was here...
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