This goes out to those who dig Detroit...
Posted March 19, 2009 by bec_young in Justseeds & Member Projects
Recently I reprinted my little print of two hands holding a sunflower. When I first made the sunflower print, the idea of having a community garden in which to grow things was just an nice idea. Last spring this idea brought many of my neighbors out of their houses and into an empty lot, one of many in Detroit, to try to make something together. A bench and compost bin were donated, one neighbor built a tree-swing. The non-profit that owns the land built a fence around the garden and installed a water spigot in the apartment building next door. The Garden Resource Program, an awe-inspiring program connecting gardeners in Detroit to other gardeners, to plants and tools, and to education, gave us a huge head start. Folks built a dozen raised beds, and planted everything from asparagus to zucchini. Those neighbors who made it through the summer, carefully attending to the watering schedule, became the tried-and-true keepers of the garden. The work paid off, and not just in fistfuls of kale and dirt-encrusted potatoes. Although it sounds corny, I'm not lying when I say that the true prize was our relationships with each other, and with the neighborhood children that came, every day, to see if they could hold the hose and to ask us, again, to explain what an eggplant tastes like. Now, mid-March, it's beginning to feel like Spring again in Detroit, and any minute now we will all be out there with our hands in the soil, digging.
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