Merciless heat

The weather in Charlotte has been brutal lately, with temperatures over 100F (40C) and very high humidity. Tempers are short, and people with mental health issues are pushed closer to acting out by the stress. Thanks to Jason and the folks at Homeless Helping Homeless, we are setting out ice water, and allowing greater access to air conditioned parts of our buildings.

Meanwhile, of course, the garden suffers in the sweltering heat, though the tomatoes we served yesterday were very sweet and disappeared extremely fast, too fast for me to take a pic! I was busy slicing them up - gardeners who work with fresh food soon find themselves in the kitchen, since so many Americans have no idea how to deal with fresh produce any more the gardeners have to get in there and fix the food. The sweetness is a result of concentrated sugars, so the heat has a benefit. But, wow! The hot weather is brutal on people.

Read about what's happening other places:

HOT WEATHER GUIDELINES FOR HOMELESS

READ ABOUT HOMELESSNESS AND HOT WEATHER RISKS

BE COOL YOU ALL

Farmers' Market

Here's our table at our farmers' market for local organic growers, held Tuesdays and Saturdays on Commonwealth near The Plaza in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood (beside the Common Market). We had the only basil, plus squash, cukes, heirloom tomatoes and flowers.

Sweet potatoes

Our sweet potatoes are growing right along, hopefully they'll be ready in time to make sweet potato pies at Thanksgiving. That's Russian Giant sunflower towering in the distance. Take a look at early posts showing the garden last fall, and you'll get a sense of how the garden changes from season to season.

CONGRATULATIONS SOCCER TEAM!

Welcome home to the Urban Ministry Center's street soccer team, just back from the Homeless World Cup in Copenhagen, Denmark. We also hosted the American trials earlier this summer in Charlotte.

Thanks, Sarah! ¡Buena suerte!

Here's our big thank you and going away party for Sarah Coffey (center right, in black), our summer intern from Davidson College (in the tradition of our current Associate Director Liz Clasen and ArtWorks Director Lawrence Cann). Sarah was also contributed greatly to the success of our garden, working with Pete to keep things watered. It has been one hot summer!

For old times sake

Remembering the old garden - Here's Ray with some cucumbers, and me in a hat that's long since gone to the compost pile, back in 2003. Our new main building and kitchen sits right on top of where our first garden used to be. But it turned out OK (urban community gardeners are used to this kind of thing). Thanks to Kathy Izard and her band of garden angels, the Center included generous space for an expanded community garden in the new landscape, and even brought the garden coordinator onto the staff. The lesson is that you have to try to see adversity as opportunity, and hope that's the way things turn out! We still fondly remember the old garden, which was a very special place. We've still got the bottle tree, too.

Working hard in the soup kitchen

Here are some of our hard working volunteers preparing lunch. We serve about 300 meals per day currently. It's interesting, much of our food is donated, stuff that has seen better days, especially produce. It makes much more sense to send it to the soup kitchen than the dumpster. But, still, fresh is better - when we put out fresh tomatoes and cukes from the garden, they disappear instantly. The quality, fresh picked and grown organically, is better than what you can buy even in a fancy supermarket. Plus, we grew it ourselves.

Pete Foster, master gardener

Without Pete, the garden simply couldn't happen. You can see our squash production in the box in front - summer squash is great, just chop it up and toss it in the soup.

The summer kitchen garden from the hill

Here's the bird's eye view. Squash, tomatoes, cukes and basil are all doing well; blackeyed peas, sweet potatoes and okra are coming on strong.

Our Lord of the Sunflowers

The round planters are filled with sunflowers and petunias, under the watchful gaze of Jesus. This is where we tried to grow tomatoes last year - didn't work. With so much tobacco smoking going on, over half the plants got tobacco mosaic plus other diseases. The planters are just the right size to sit down on, for a welcome break as people stand in line for lunch.

"you pick" tomatoes and corn

This is our "you pick" section, where anybody who wants to can pick their own green tomatoes. This has worked out great, compared to last year - we have red tomatoes from the 'kitchen garden' to use in the soup kitchen this year. Last year, we didn't harvest a single red one, because they all got liberated for frying green. The corn was pretty, but not too productive this year.

The fall garden

In Charlotte, like many places in the South, fall gardens are just as rewarding as summer gardens. Maybe even more so. Our garden this season has had a bumper crop of broccoli, collards, carrots, lettuce, beets and turnips. It's been mild, so things are still growing - we'll be cutting collards a third time tomorrow morning.

Also, two Eagle Scouts just completed pathway projects, saving us literally thousands of dollars, and opening the garden to all, even those with mobility challenges.

First Project Complete!

Since the Urban Ministry Center launched the Art Works 945 program several years ago, gardening has been an intergral activity to the programs’s community building success. Likewise the garden has been the central site for community meetings, celebrations, and art making. Now that Art Works 945 has blossomed into Community Works 945, gardening has now become a program of its own under the Community Works umbrella. In the picture above, new garden director and long time garden contributor, Don Boekelheide can be seen in his trademark straw hat directing Rob Cann and Tammy Hempill as they pour concrete peers for our beautiful garden arbor. The arbor was originally built by eaglescout Andy Anderson. Folks at the center took it down, stored it, repainted it, and reassembled it for the new space after construction of the new soup kitchen. Fittingly, in the other picture, standing next to Antonio Romero, Annie Gurly, one of the true lynchpins of Art Works since its inception, hands up the first bolt to hold together the reconstructed arbor.