I'm In The Community Garden Of Hope And Peace

Just so you know right off the bat, I don't like that name. Too pretentious.

The other week I was at the farmer's market and came upon this booth run by The Woodland Park Harvest Center. Never heard of them, never seen them before at the farmer's market. I went over and chatted them up about who they were and what they did. They run community gardens. They have four locations around here where people can come and garden and grow food for themselves or grow food to donate to food pantries or grow food for therapeutic reasons or grow food just for grins and giggles.

I signed up.

Last week was so wet and cold, but I met with one of the ladies on Thursday evening. She showed me the raised beds they have so far and gave me some ideas for getting started. I decided to not start my own bed this late in the summer. So I'm just going to help out for now.

In the four-season bed, she said I could pull out the row of arugula and plant whatever I wanted in there. I planted two tomato plants, a spearmint, a lemon mint, and a chocolate mint. I told Marilyn what I was doing and she reminded me that a psychic told me I should make teas. A year ago, a year and half maybe, Dhyana and I went to a new age-y/holistic fair and I got a psychic reading. The lady said a bunch of hokey stuff like I had a lot of kids, I should make teas, and I should listen to crystals and write books about what I hear in the crystals. Woo-hoo! Well, I do have a bunch of kids if you count the ones at school. Ok, I'll give her that one. Anywho, Marilyn, in her infinite wisdom, remembered all this and said here was my chance to make teas. I was looking for peppermint cuz that's what she drinks to keep the migraine headaches away, but my nursery didn't have any straight peppermint. I'll try it with the spearmint, lemon mint and chocolate mint. Could be yummy.

The location where I go is right across the highway from me down by the Safeway. There used to be a great nursery there called Aspen Gardens. The property is still owned by the lady who used to run it with her husband. They were older and then he died and she couldn't run by herself. The little building is still there, nice open areas for the beds where her greenhouses used to be, and her house with her little fenced in yard and shed and chickens. I guess she's just letting the Harvest Center use the property for free. Which is awfully nice of her, considering she even lets them use her hose and water. They had an really, really great nursery before they had to close. I was very sad when they closed since there was nothing else up here like it. Since then, another nursery has opened out off of Highway 67. A lady runs it out of her yard. I found about her at the farmer's market, too.

I went over there today. I watered, checked on all my mints and cleaned out a non-food bed. It had purple sage and some other daisy-like flower in, horribly choked by grass.

So I don't like to call it The Community Garden of Hope and Peace. I just like to call it Aspen Gardens.