Community Gardens

I was glad to see this story about community gardens in the paper today. The whole reason I'm obsessed with moving out of this condo is because I want a yard to garden in. At the same time, this is one of the best places in town to live and I'd hate to give it up. There's a big empty lot a few blocks away that would make a sweet community garden, though right now it's full of dog shit. That's a big problem with growing things in the city that I've written about before.

A couple of years ago my neighbor helped me build a planter I put on my balcony, and Wyatt and I grew salad greens and herbs in it. It was a pain in the ass to keep watered - we had to lug watering cans from the kitchen and drip all the way through the house to get to it, and in the peak summer it needs water twice a day. But it was nice being able to just step out with some scissors and clip a salad for dinner. However the following season some exterior work was done on the building, pressure washing and whatnot, and the planter got inundated with bleach and chips of old paint. I'm not sure about the concentration of bleach but I saw several empty gallon jugs of it out in the yard near the pressure washer, and decided maybe we shouldn't eat greens out of the planter anymore.

My friend Sr. Bedford has an allotment in that community garden in Glenwood, and he grows Kale that's probably genetically modified with DNA from Godzilla. I swear one year it's going to uproot itself and start knocking over buildings downtown.

This is my favorite place to buy seeds from, though with my limited gardening options I haven't done much shopping from them. I'm going to try elderberry in the planter this year.