August 4th

Got off to a relatively late start and arrived at the Garden about 9 am. Ginny was already there. We worked for about 90 minutes. Met the gardener with the beautiful rose trellis gateway- a man named Dustka (?sp) He stopped his car and came over to chat- at first it was a little odd b/c neither Ginny nor I knew that he had a garden- He was very pleasant, said he had been at Nottoway about three years. He stayed and chatted for a while. At one point, when we mentioned that the garden had poison ivy, he mentioned that he didn't know what poison ivy looked like,  that he was from another country. I asked what country and he said Iraq- but that he was from Northern Iraq and that he was a Kurd. He asked if we knew what a Kurd was and luckily we did know. He noted that he regretted that he put so much stuff in this year- hard to walk around the garden. He believes that the best way to figure out what to do is to walk around and look at successful gardens; he said he just got tomato seeds from another gardener who has beautful  tomato plants.
Another gardener (plot 15) Melissa stopped by and said hello. She's been there about 5 years. She said the stink bugs were bad this year and she thinks that her beans were lousy on account of them. When we mentioned the weeds, Melissa said that she was glad that our plot was cleaned up. She said she knew that there was a long wait list and it was good that someone was taking care of the garden. I asked her how long it had been untended- on account of the height of the weeds- and she said that she saw a woman working on the garden at the beginning of last year.
The front of the garden is almost  fenced---looks a bit more finished with a fence up. Dustka said the fence should be more than 6 feet on account of the deer. At this point ours is three feet high. He said most people have higher fences than the maximum detailed in the rules- he said rabbits are an issue, too. I guess we'll have to put in a bottom barrier to prevent rabbits and a higher border to prevent deer. Saw a little black mouse when I moved the tarps ( I wanted to get rid of the standing water---it was getting stinky).
Ginny is getting more fence poles and wire. The green wire from the back yard was not long enough for the 20 foot front.