Gardening in Community

Luckily, I’ve been spending a bit of time in the community garden. It’s amazing how I can obsess over such a small plot of land. (Suburban gardeners: How do you share the love with an entire yard? I think I might just go crazy. Or I’d have one beautiful flower bed and the rest would be wilderness.) I have planted a few tomatoes, squash, bush ‘cukes. After walking a feisty Chihuahua monster, and before the thunderstorm hit today I threw in some Teddy Bear Sunflowers just for fun. While at the farmers market last week I found Chocolate Mint and Pineapple Mint. I had to acquire them both. (Photos to come!)

Since joining we’ve had two community gardening days in which all of the gardeners gather at the garden to complete a task. We’ve cleared rubble off the new plot, chopped some junk trees, and leveled the lot for the future communal tomato patch. (You can see the lot in the pic above. That land is now level and ready for ‘maters!) It’s a lovely feeling to garden in community. Turns out most of the gardeners are also yoga practitioners so I feel an instant connection with many of them, as if our passion for the earth wasn’t enough.

I am currently sharing a half plot with another gardener who may just be MIA. I don’t want her to miss out on the gardening fun, but I’m eying up her empty side and dreaming of zinnias and sunflowers.

PS – My roof is blowing up. More on that later. We’re in the middle of a brutal heat wave and my plants are LOVING it. Now I just need to sort out the lack of water flow. I’ve set up buckets at drip points off the roof so when it rains I have makeshift rain barrels. (Yeah – we need gutter work done too!)