Racers in the Garden

I’ve figured out where the snakes like to sun themselves in the morning, so I am careful not to disturb them when I go out to the garden. Yesterday, this one was hanging out at the far end of the lavender hedge:

Montana has ten native snake species, four of which inhabit our corner of the state: garters, gophersnakes, rubber boas, and racers. We do not have rattlers where we live. I’ve got both garter snakes and racers in my garden. The difference is in the size and coloration. Garter snakes tend to be smaller, with orange or yellow stripes down their backs. Racers are larger—I had one here a few years ago that was a good two feet long—and are solid grayish brown.

I like the racers because they will eat small rodents, but they also act as a deterrent to the larger ones. (I’d love to have a gophersnake because one of those would take care of the big rodents, but I’ve never seen one here.) And the bug population has decreased significantly in the past week or so. Grasshoppers were turning my tomatillo plants into lacy works of art until the snakes moved in. Now the tomatillos are growing unmolested. I have never had a problem with tomato hornworms or potato beetles, either.

I worked in the garden yesterday morning until it got too hot. (Just for reference, anything over 75F is “too hot.”) My friend Susan came over with a supply of paper and we spent the rest of the day copying and folding our community organization’s quarterly newsletter so she could mail it out today.

Our community organization—the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation—is having some growing pains. The organization itself has been in existence for 20 years and was established to help maintain the original schoolhouse campus that sits in the middle of Mountain Brook. Up until a few years ago, the local school district had control of that campus, but they wanted out from under the responsibility. What followed was months and months of legal detective work to find the descendants of the family that had donated the property in 1927, because the original terms of the donation specified that the property would revert back to the family should it ever stop being used as an educational institution. When the sole living descendant was identified, she chose to donate the campus to the Homestead Foundation.

The husband and I have supported the organization financially, but this year, I got drafted into being on the Fundraising Committee. Sadly, there have been a lot of personal squabbles that have gotten in the way of some of our activities, but such is the way of human beings attempting to work together, I think.

The organization operates on a shoestring. We have determined that we need to raise a minimum of $15,000 a year just to stay viable. That amount comes from memberships as well as special activities such as pie socials, the plant sale, a yard sale, and our upcoming garden tour. And that $15,000 doesn’t reflect all of the miscellaneous donations of time and a tremendous amount of sweat equity—like spending five hours printing and folding a newsletter—that go into making these things happen.

[I have an office-sized copy machine that does double-sided copies and I am happy to have it be used for situations just like this. I also got to spend time visiting with Susan, although after we were done, I ordered a paper-folding machine to make the process go more quickly the next time, LOL.]

I want this organization to succeed. I hope that everyone involved can focus more on the goal, which is to help this community organization grow and thrive, and less on the specifics of how we get there. And we need to be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Yes, we should strive to do the best job we can, but we should also have some grace for ourselves and others. We are halfway through 2022 and we’ve already raised half of our financial goal for the year, and I think that’s amazing.

Once the garden tour is over, I need to finish setting up the Homestead Foundation website. We have so many amazing activities to share with the community and that will help us to get the word out.

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I do not have any more serger classes schedule until the beginning of August, which is good because I am going to need the breathing room after this garden tour. Next week is going to be spent making the garden pretty. I think the baby robins have fledged, so I’m hoping to be able to retrieve my soaker hoses and finish setting up the watering system without being killed by their parents. We are supposed to get much warmer temps next week and I expect stuff will start taking off.