Building Beds!

Today was a pretty glorious day. Yes, the sun was out, the birds were chirping, the breeze was blowing and summer was doing it's general summering thing that it has been gracious to bestow upon us rather consistently the past couple weeks. But that was not the prime beauty of the day.

Today, we started to build our Packwood Community Garden!

Like my methodology for many unruly, overwhelming projects, I'd been feeling like I'd been dragging my heels, relying on logistical setbacks as convenient excuses to disguise my very not logistical disposition of perpetual intimidation. When we finally received the garden agreement and signed last Thursday, I was coming down with a cold, and yet had another excuse to admire my yet unsullied idealized vision from the comfortable distance of conceptual daydream. 

Luckily, I have been developing override software for this backwards human error and the updates are gradually getting speedier metabolism. So despite my irrational sluggishness, I went ahead and got out the e-mails, made the calls and picked some dates.

I didn't have the wood, didn't have a truck to get the wood, didn't have nails, and certainly not any experiential expertise. But just as I had with the Talent Show, I knew I needed to go ahead and get some action acting up. 

Fortunately, I have a diligently committed, albeit small core team. When I e-mailed one of my helpful cohorts to try and figure out a contact for who might have a truck I could meet up with for wood, he e-mailed back saying he had it all scheduled to meet Robert at the hardware store on building day to pick up and cut all of our wood. ___ is a retired man who loves to boast every day as a weekend and travels to Guatemala and Italy and other far off lands in the midst of his busy Packwood days of hiking and building projects and fine wine collecting. Living a life he loves has made him a loving and generous man and having led a community garden in Tacoma and being proficient in business, he'd been an intrinsic part of the group. I had worked most closely with him and on building day, Sarah and her kids all came to help. Having seen his interactions with Elie in a meeting before, I was a bit worried. He was a great teacher but very opinionated, hard-lined and could certainly be taken as condescending to some. The kids had very gentle personalities so I couldn't tell how they took his presence, but when lunch time came around and he offered to treat everyone to pizza and sodas, he undeniably won some major kudos points; extras from Cooper when he asked the bikers at the restaurant if Cooper could sit on their motorcycle for a picture. 

But back to the building. It went beautifully. And of course, it felt amazing to finally see a product coming together. It took some time to get all the wood and tools to the park but building the beds themselves was relatively quick and un-complex. Why on earth had I been fearful? Working in a rather overgrown area, we'd begun to dig out the space we wanted to use, when ____ said he would run to the store and contribute a weed barrier to lay down under the beds. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have even gotten to building today. We followed his advice for the construction methods and even Cooper, a spunky and eager 5-year old helped hammer in the nails and capture our progress on camera.

I hadn't bothered to advertise the event much. I figure that those who are not already avid gardeners or dedicated to the project would need to see some solid evidence before following through on their interests of participation. We have one more to build on Tuesday and then I figure we will have something we can present to the rest of the community that will captivate their attention more. And I need to pledge: no more sluggishness! 

After all, we don't want any slugs near our garden!

before

        

                                    

after