September 21st dawned clear and bright the way the Day of Caring always does in Charlottesville, VA. It shone on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of eager folks looking forward to the largest day of volunteering of the year. Or maybe they were really just looking forward to getting out of their workplaces. We’ll never know.
About thirty of those volunteers came from the UVA department of student athletes to volunteer in our community garden. Students, coaches, and staff joined Debbie Ashby and Nehali Patel of PVCC’s Student Success Office and worked on a number of tasks throughout the morning. They worked hard and had fun and made an awesome difference in the garden.
Our exterior fence had become quite overgrown with years of vines thickly intertwined and entire sections of terrain made impassable by tall, weedy growth. Our compost bins were falling to pieces and so choked with brushy material that they were quite unusable. All this, plus planting, watering, creating new beds, organizing the shed… I could go on and on. Much of this is simply one of those artifacts of Covid, for we have not yet returned to the number of students on campus that we had prior to 2020, and well the garden has been maintained well in some areas, we fell behind in others. It is deeply soothing to peel back the layers and bring back some order.
We are very grateful.
_____ PVCC Horticulture & Environmental Club _____ Community Garden 