Collierville Town Square Christmas 2013

Collierville Town Square Christmas 2013

Today was the huge holiday crafts festival done on a Collierville scale. OK we had a blacksmif and a glass blower. Wish we had kids' crafts booths where they could dip candles, make small wreaths, make tree ormanents etc but that seems to be a stretch for the powers that be.

All told we have a beautiful town which is exquisitely maintained. We have excellent leadership. I am and we all should be very proud!!!

But I am never satisfied. I want fairy houses, hummingbird feeders, a Saturday market, and a Christmas market - all on the square.

See pix below.

a mover and a shaker

log cabin facing west side of square

Bible museum north side of square

Da train boss, da train

Depot's west end

McGinnis Service Station and town clock

the glass blower

McGinnis Service Station east side of square

two old fat guys with hats

and then the metalsmith

train approaching the depot platform

north side of square

east end of the square

our prize and only mural

love this memorial

da square

see da yeller empty BNSF train going back to Powder River Basin in WY for another load of low sulfur coal to bring back to Sheffield AL

depot platform for thrills for young and old when trains pass by within a few feet with whistle blowing

south side of depot next to da tracks

now this here is scary I dont care who you are

our water tower named Obi Wan Kenobe

cleanest restrooms in the state

Victory Garden status Thursday December 19 2013

I wish each of you angels a Very Merry Christmas and hope you realize all the wonderful gift of free produce you have grown and donated to charity.

We have done a lot since last report. One of the wonderful/educational/demonstration parts is we garden all twelve months and harvest most months as per this blog entry. Note we have growing now kale, carrots, onyuns, garlic, rutabagas, and collards. 

We gathered and spread out in the garden lots of cardboard (thanks to Patree), bales of straw (thanks to CHS baseball team), and 31 bags of leaves.

Here is a list of the varieties of garlic we planted (clink to see descriptions):

Giant Kettle River 

Elephant 

Chesnok Red

Redneck Wild 

Killarney Red 

Romanian Red 

Georgian Crystal 

St Helen's Red 

Some have begun to sprout:

Wednesday December 18, Patree and Stephanie picked da cabbiges: 257 lbs of Bonnie and Savoy varieties and cleaned and took to da Food Pantry Thursday morning. We also donated 6 large trash bags of outer leaves to Trey Campbell for his free range chickens. We had 4 bags left we strewed on the garden as mulch. All told this was 150 lbs but we aren't counting it in our total.

Stephanie and Patree cleaning cabbiges 

Mr Winchell at Food Pantry accepting da delivery

Beautiful Savoy cabbiges in da back of Opie on da way to da Food Pantry

Thursday Stephanie and I planted 4 bundles of DixonDale yellow candy onyuns. We counted 286 plants. They were planted on either side of 6 inch deep trenches where the Bonnie liquid organic fertilizer was applied. The idea from DixonDale is to grow long deep roots all winter to support large bulbs in da spring. Sposed to be da Good Lord gonna water them in good tomorrow.

Stephanie laid out and planted all 286 onyun sets

one planted bed

Harvest total 2013 to date:

   4,430 lbs + 257 = 4,687 lbsfor 2013!!!!!!!!!!   

 

Finance report:  

  Balance as of 11/12/2013 $576.05. I need to file expense report for the onyun sets.

I am thinking per advice and demonstration by MAMG PAR garden at Davies Plantation (Diane Parks and GA Crosby and Jaime Childers) to do plots 2 and 4 (the middle two) with cinder blocks. Costs about half as much as treated wood. I went and watched (helped some) Wednesday as they built several new raised cinder block beds.

Also thinking about getting 3 hose reels and new hoses (non kink kind) and three new sprinklers. 

Also thinking about getting four new cattle panel trellises.

I have asked the Memphis Area Master Gardeners for $2,100 dollars to do this infrastructure work.

As always your advice is needed and much appreciated.

Thanks,

cw