- Author: Trisha E Rose
Published on: February 27, 2019
The three Master Gardeners signed up to staff our table at the Vallejo Farmer's Market today were emailing and texting back and forth this past week, will there be a break in the “major” rain storm so we can attend our booth at the market? For a good week beforehand our weather apps displayed rain Thursday through Saturday, then it changed to show clearing on Friday. It became a news event with predictions of thunderstorms with lightning bolt displays on our smartphones. So much hype! January and February are the months when we get most of our annual rainfall. We can add November and December in there also but wisely we stop our weekly attendance mid-November. With so many holidays and preparations for family and friends events, we all agree to take a break.
Getting restarted mid-January is a challenge with our “moving target” weather predictions. Master Gardeners won't melt but we have many Pest Notes, handouts on trees, IPM, drought tolerant issues, vegetable planting guides, and many other gardening related topics and books that will become soggy very quickly.
Case in point, we had 3 Master Gardeners committed to this volunteer event by signing up on our volunteer calendar to work the market. We saw a window of opportunity between 9 and 1 PM to set up our table. Before we set out this morning we actually walked around outside for a reality check, “will the blue sky, fleeting clouds, and sunshine stay with us”? Our volunteer from Fairfield had lots of rain but trusted my text that the weather in Vallejo was better. She stopped for gas on her drive in, No! her car would not restart. So she found herself blocking the aisle at the Costco gas station, AAA was on the way and the guys wanted to move her car out of the way, ugh. But she did make it. Our 2nd volunteer and I live in Vallejo and found showers on and off on our way over to Georgia and Marin. We got our table set up and waited for the questions to begin. Well, it was very, very slow. But we caught up on what was going on in our gardens, what new plans we were working on. Around noon the patrons at the market were thinning out. We began gathering our literature and here come the showers about an hour early. So we headed home, happy about our day and chats with each other and the ones with the various visitors to our table.
Last week one of the Master Gardeners from Fairfield made a comment at the end of our day at the market. She said, “I may not know anyone at the event I have volunteered for but we are all gardeners and always have something to talk about and share”.
That pretty much sums up why I volunteer, its great to nuture our gardening community.
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