Today's Adventures

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today we went to the Charleston Food Forest and Coles County Community Garden, along with other errands.  See photos.


First we stopped at Dairy Queen for lunch.

Then we went to the Charleston Food Forest. I took some pictures and picked a lot of seeds. These include:
* a sandwich bag about half full of lavender fronds for a friend (I really needed scissors)
* a sandwich bag with a handful of marigold seed heads
* a sandwich bag about half full of black-eyed susan seed heads
* a sandwich bag of milkweed seeds and fluff (some of which is from the community garden)
* a sandwich bag with a handful of red berries from the asparagus plants
* a quart bag crammed full of zinnia seeds (about half of which is from the community garden)
* a sandwich bag mostly full of groundnut roots that someone had dug up and left exposed
* a sandwich bag with about a tablespoon of chaff and hopefully seeds from the skirrets

Today was supposed to be in the upper 60s but was in the lower 70s. That's a lot better than 80s but I still ran out of heat tolerance. At least I made it all the way through the food forest. I need to remember to bring plant scissors and my trowel when I do a harvesting run.  Frost asters are blooming; marigolds, zinnias, and a few others are still going; the air was full of butterflies including cabbage, buckeyes, and painted ladies.

We went over to Mattoon to visit the credit union. We also picked up a candy bar and a soda at the gas station.

Next we headed back to Charleston and stopped at Rural King. We got a roll of wire mesh, a construction staple gun, and a box of staples for a repair project; also a replacement flashlight, a fall-themed T-shirt with flowers and pumpkins, and two 5-gallon buckets with lids. The flashlight is a major favorite: it has a hook on top, a bendable hinge in the middle, and a wide foot with a strong magnet on the bottom. It has a narrow forward beam and a wide side beam, each with its own switch. The only thing we don't love about it is the flimsy battery holder. Our old one died and I've been wanting to replace it. The buckets are for the bags of gravel and sand that are in my way on the old picnic table. So that was a highly successful trip.

Then we went to the Coles County Community Garden. I took more pictures and picked a lot of seeds. These include:
* a sandwich bag of milkweed seeds and fluff (some of which is from the food forest)
* a gallon bag mostly full of large seedheads from the tall purple sedum I've been coveting all season
* a quart bag crammed full of zinnia seeds (about half of which is from the community garden)
* a sandwich bag about half full of very sharp little seed heads from blanket flowers
* a sandwich bag about half full of fluffy gray seeds from Mexican hats (they pull right off the cones)
* 3 small yellow tomatoes

The community garden is about half vegetables in raised beds, although little of that survived; and half a sprawling flower garden of mostly native prairie species plus a few extras like the purple sedum. There are four long rows of zinnias in there, all still blooming enthusiastically, with lots of dry seed heads. I didn't even get much into the middle rows except for hunting a few scarcer colors, mostly I just went around the outside.  Several voluminous patches of purple asters are blooming but haven't set seed yet.  Not much of the vegetable side has survived, but I did rescue a few tomatoes.

All told, I think I spent 1 1/2 to 2 hours gathering seeds. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 and Illinois is $15, so that's either $14.50 or $30 for 2 hours of work. Seed packets average around $3 with a typical range of $2-5. Bigger bags of seeds run $15-30 for the stuff I commonly buy; I probably have that much in zinnias alone. Wildflower seeds are a great deal more expensive than domesticated seeds, and so are roots like the groundnuts. It's got to be well over $100 of seeds that I won't need to buy. \o/

By then I was exhausted and it was almost sunset. We grabbed supper at Arby's, then headed home.

I am still tired, but I feel very accomplished. :D

Comments

[sylvanwitch]

Excellent money-saving haul and better for the environment, too! YAY! :-)

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I got some good stuff last fall, too, including marigolds and zinnias some of which have hopefully produced seeds this year. And the crosne knotroots that I have two pots of, so it'll be interesting to see how many roots are in those.