planting strawberries

I still haven't heard about the job, so to try and distract myself from the stress of waiting, I decided to join a volunteer group at the Presidio Native Plants Nursery today. It was a three hour-session and I had SO MUCH FUN!! I started out transplanting sage seedlings for the first hour and a half - I transplanted about 100 or so. They are teeny-tiny little plants, and so they give you a chopstick and you dig each little plant out with the chopstick, then use the chopstick to make a hole in the larger container. There was about 5 or 6 other people also doing transplanting and so we had nice chats as well, about where the plants would eventually go and other native plants from the area. Then we got to take a break and have a snack for about 30 minutes, and there was yummy snacks - deviled eggs, oreos, chocolate-chip bread, cornbread w/cherries in it. I also got a chance to talk for awhile with some of the other nursery workers. Eveyone was really nice.

Then after the snack, we broke out into groups for the second activity. They give you a choice of about 5 things to do. There was more transplanting, bucket patrol (which is picking up buckets from places in the Presidio with compost items in the buckets and taking it to the compost heaps), mosquito traps (setting mosquito traps), and strawberry seedlings. I picked strawberry seedlings. In the earlier session, a group had taken strawberry clippings from runners down at Baker's Beach. We clipped them down into smaller sections and then planted them in perlite. Eventually the clippings will root and then they will re-distribute the plants to different parts of the Presidio. It was really fun and really peaceful to help out.

Also, there was another girl who showed up late (yes, of course I was late) with me and was really nice. We spent a lot of time chatting and then she gave me a ride home so I made a friend! She rides her bike a lot as well and so we might meet up later in the week for a bike ride across the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito, to a happy hour at a mexican restaurant over there, and then catch the ferry back into San Francisco. YAY!

While talking with the other people during the strawberry session, I heard about some local community gardens, where you can sign up for a plot and then grow whatever you want there. So I'm thinking about looking into that as another option for getting outside and gardening. I would just love to be able to still garden, even though we are in an apartment!

Well, there's not too much else to report. Neil had his first class yesterday and seems to really like things so far. He is in his studio painting today as he has no classes. He's also applying for a work-study job as a library assistant, which would be nice for him!

Sorry, no pics from today. I would to have loved to take some, but totally forgot the camera. I think tomorrow I might try to take some pics from the neighborhood, and give a little tour of where we live...