Marsh Community Gardeners Recount Their Summer Experiences

For many plot owners at the Marsh Memorial Sanctuary's community garden, two themes stick out that define this summer: supportive families and well-fed animal intruders.

It is 6 p.m. at the garden and the sun is beating down as if it were noon. Darielle Rayner is watering her plot of tomatoes, cauliflower, collard greens, cucumbers, marigolds and many unknown plants. She insists that she has "never gardened before in her life," but appeared to be a natural at it.

Rayner comes to the garden almost every day, but she recalls one specific moment from the busy months.

"We had awful rain and wind. I came [to the garden] and discovered my tomato plants really bedraggled and sort of strewn all over the ground….I thought 'Oh my God.' I felt really at a loss. I felt I needed moral support. So, I called my husband up and said 'You'll have to make your own dinner tonight because I'm at the garden, the tomato plants are a mess, and I'm going to be here a while…unless you want to come help me.'"

Her husband arrived, and brought large sticks to help hold up the tomato plants. They stayed until about 8 p.m., and together, they brought her plot back to life.

On a less touching note, Rayner also recalls people seeing rabbits. "Some have even tried to catch them!"

Charlie Versaci, another evening gardener, is one of those people. One of his most memorable anecdotes from his summer involves chasing around a rabbit with his 16-year-old son Christopher, his 10-year-old daughter Gina and his wife Eva.

"The four of us thought we could catch it," he said. "We tried to surround it, to corner it. It can't be done!"

Versaci's plants include tomatoes, carrots, zucchini and strawberries – just to name a few. He got involved in the community garden along with other members of his daughter's Girl Scout troop, says that his family has loved helping out at the garden, "especially when there are things to pick."

Marion Halberg, a morning gardener with a plot that includes scallions, beets, kale, broccoli and parsley, also recalls a moment with a clever rabbit.

"A rabbit came in, and he just completely outsmarted us. We opened the gate, we tried to chase him out, [another plot owner] thought that she was going to catch him. It was like a cartoon. We did not get him out!"

Halberg also helped feed a chubby chipmunk. One day, after realizing that her perennials were being nabbed by a curious creature, she spotted a chipmunk running from her plot with a strawberry in his mouth. Refusing to be outsmarted again, Halberg leaned on one of her neighboring plot owners, Jim Novak, who built a cage-like shield to place over her perennials; the chipmunks stay out, but the rain and sunlight get in.

Halberg, another example of a newbie gardener with extreme "beginner's luck," also involved her family in her gardening. Through Facebook, Halberg's family and friends have tracked the progress of her garden over the past 14 weeks. "Once a week, since the beginning, I have been posting a picture."

Even beyond using the technology, Becky Simkhai, another plot owner, is involving the next generation in a hands-on way. Her plot is split into three sections, one of which belongs to her 8-year-old daughter Kyla. Kyla's section is called the "the flower friendship garden" and, "at the beginning of the season, whenever [Kyla] had play dates, we would go to the nursery, and each of her friends would pick out a flower. And then they would come to the garden and plant them together."

Simkhai, Kyla and her two other children – 5-year-old Lev and 2-year-old Myer - visit the garden almost every day to check up on their tomatoes, basill, pumpkins, spicy peppers, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, parsley, cucumbers, mint, watermelon and corn.

Simkhai and her family's most memorable moment of the summer involves a critter as well. Playing in the garden one day, Kyla and Myer spotted a snapping turtle hiding behind some raspberry bushes. For two hours, using a pitchfork, Simkhai and a few other gardeners carefully worked to transfer the turtle from the ground, into a garbage can and into the pond outside of the garden.

"It was the best!" Kyla recalls.

Jodi Stokhamer's best of the summer involved her sibling as well. Last Saturday, "I was saucing up my tomatoes, and I called my sister and told her 'If you put some water on to boil, and throw in some spaghetti, I'll be over in five minutes.'"

Reflecting on the night, Stokhamer says, "[The garden] has brought my family closer together. Saturday night, hanging out with my sister, eating spaghetti, does it get any better than that?"

Peter Grunthal, a Mount Kisco Trustee who is also a gardener and member of the sanctuary's board, sums up the garden's summer well: "The garden has clearly been a great success with many gardeners growing a wide variety of vegetables with a lot of thrills for kids and adults as they harvest their fruits and vegetables."

From Swiss chard strudel to pickled cucumbers to white eggplant thickened tomato sauce, families and friends (human and non-human alike), have greatly benefitted from the crops that the garden has produced and the connections that it has reinforced.