So incredibly satisfying: went to our collective garden (it's about 5 blocks from our apt.) Sunday and picked spinach, baby lettuce, aragula, turnip leaves, lettuce, parsley, chives, thyme and sage; provided us two huge salad meals, and that's just the beginning, as the season is just starting. The greens are gorgeous. I can't wait for the tomatoes and baby turnips, strawberries and raspberries.

And our fellow gardeners-- a collective of about 20 of our neighbors-- are wonderful. Gardeners, I'm coming to think, seem to be really special, interesting people who care a lot about the earth. Naturally, they also seem to be very 'down to earth.' They're a really good influence on me, and I find myself having become a bit more humble and grounded as I learn the ways of turning earth, planting, composting and growing food.

Turns out the history of our garden is that M.I.T. was coerced by Cambridge to provide land for local gardeners to create garden plots in, way back in the 1970s. I'm proud of my city for not taking the land back and developing it at some point. One of our gardeners has been with the Emily St. Garden for 33 years, and helped to get this same garden going back in the 1970s.

Sharrhan:


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What a great story about your garden. I wish everyone had a garden. We have one started. We haven't gotten the first thing out of it yet. We are doing 4x4 squares. Our goal is to have about 12 of them and 2-2x2 squares. I will try to get some good pics and post them. I would love it if you could too.

I love what you wrote about June Carter Cash. I am a big fan of that family. I wrote Johnny Cash a "love" letter when I was six.

Hi packd4fun,
I just bought fresh batteries for my camera so I can take some pictures and post them. Our garden is 35X1000', with plots of varying sizes. It's just now starting to get really green, but most of the plantings are still pretty young except for the spinach. There's rhubarb galore (it's a perreniel), but I won't touch that stuff!

One of the things I love about this particular garden group that I chose, mainly because it was closest to my home, is that it turns out it's the only one in Cambridge that makes the whole start-to-finish process of planting/growing/ harvesting a group effort; all the other local public gardens entail each individual being responsible for your own plot. This is a great advantage and learning experience for people like myself who are unskilled in this area.

Also I'm totally blown away by the way these people were immediately and totally open to having Jonathan, my blind mate, participate in the garden, even though it has required them to use a lot of ingenuity and thoughtful consideration to help make the garden 'blind-friendly.' When I realized recently how much they have had to change in order to accommodate him, I was so grateful. They've really been inclusive and embraced him in so many ways-- from marking the garden paths with extra posts that his cane can make contact with and tall posts at corners of plots that will hit him at shoulder height, to people teaching him to feel the different weeds (he's a great weeder-- much better than me). Most importantly, whenever we have meetings, they make an un-self-conscious attempt to make sure Jonathan can hear what is being said, and sometimes someone will recap what was just talked about, since they know Jonathan is also hard of hearing.

Just exceptional.

Glad you like the June Cash quote-- I thought it was beautiful and couldn't resist posting it.

Sharrhan:


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