Hello everyone! Before I get into the details of my internship with the Army Corps of Engineers, I’d like to tell you how I spent my Independence Day. While I’m sure the majority of you cooked out, set off massive amounts of fireworks, or simply enjoyed your day off work, my crew and I opted for a less traditional approach and had a gardening extravaganza to offset the beginning of summer. The idea first surfaced when we noticed the sad demise of the previous plants that were in the garden. At that very moment we declared our intentions to restore the garden, but as the season set in, our good gardening intentions moved further and further down our dog-eared to-do list post it note. Weeks later when planning activities for the 4th of July, we learned that it was forecast to be cloudy all day.
This meant two things: One, fireworks would be obscured by the low hanging clouds, and two, we would have to find something to do that did not require a lot of heat (swimming, for example, was out!). After revisiting our to-do lists, we decided upon gardening, which is a breeze in cool, cloudy weather.
We gathered all the necessary supplies, deciding on plants that would provide essentially summery comestibles, such as big juicy steak tomatoes for hamburgers, grapes for a delectable fruit salad, and bell peppers for a variety of dishes. We even planted lemongrass and indoor eucalyptus to make our own bug repellant.
We also constructed bird houses, and prepared our own homemade suet for the birds to munch. The work was dirty and grueling, but our yield will be worth it! According to my authoritative sources (the little tags that came with the plants) we should expect to see vegetables within two months. The eucalyptus and lemongrass will be ready in less than two weeks, so stay tuned for the results of our do-it-yourself bug repellent experiment!
After hours of hard, holiday work, we looked upon our garden and bird houses with satisfaction, then sat down to a meal that we prepared together. Once night fell, the clouds blew away, and we were able to enjoy the fireworks after all. 🙂
