A local garden this week right next to the other community garden down the street from mine. I love the blue bee balm lilac there in a middle. Her yard is on a slope, and she has let it go a bit wild as her kids grow.
I found out some things about this other community garden at the annual membership meeting last week. One of the women I sit on the investment committee with who I barely know came and sat down next to me before dinner and we started chatting, as one does. She presents as wealthy and professional, older, with maybe some neurological issues. Her walk is unsteady.
It turns out much to my astonishment that she has a plot in the above community garden. She lives in this huge three building condo complex that is about a seven-minute walk away from where I live. These are expensive condos, half with a great view east to the mountains. It turns out that many of the plots in this other garden are held by people from this upscale complex. I had no idea.
That is why I couldn’t get a plot in there. It is slightly further away but there is no big street to cross and no ever shifting homeless encampments to avoid on the way.
There is currently this brazen encampment on a field with a huge oak tree that is in a triangle between two busy roads that is posted with a seven-foot-high No Trespassing sign. The tent is right up in front of the sign in the middle of the field and they have a “privacy” poop tent next door. Lounge chairs and a cooler. Yesterday I saw the occupant inviting a couple in as I was walking to the garden.
It is this constant cat and mouse game. Our new mayor is determined to get these folks into housing and lately they have used fencing to block of a nearby pedestrian tunnel that no sane person without criminal intent would use. On the same trip to the garden, I saw a bicycle parked outside some of that fencing and a familiar indigent guy sitting on the top of a stair on the inside of the fence lounging and reading a newspaper.
Next to the upscale condos they have placed concrete boulders and now new high tech sturdy fencing. The campers have bolt cutters.
Anyway, it turns out my table companion is on a lot of committees. And one of them is the exercise committee for the Condo Association. And in talking she found out I teach yoga.
They have a common room. I have thought walking by for about 10 years, I wonder if I could rent that room to teach in. But I am already teaching plenty of classes now and am not sure that I could or would want to take on another. But oh baby. Plenty of on street parking. A built-in audience. 7 minutes from my place. In person. Tempting.
She brought it up. You know she said, we are looking for a yoga teacher.
I sent her my particulars. Some members of the committee are going to consider taking an online class to audition me. I am not sure in that community what they are looking for exactly so this will be interesting.
I am trying not to get ahead of myself contemplating adding this into my schedule. Energy management is a big concern though. I will be 71 in less than a month and no matter what they say about the new middle age, 71 is not it. At least not this body, at this time.
The reason I was walking to the garden in the middle of the day yesterday instead of the morning when I usually go is that I had a box of plants that Mrs. Sherlock insisted on buying for me at my favorite collective sustainable plant nursery/store.
There are still spots to fill in, but I finally feel like my plot is a real garden now. My favorite is a Riverbank Lupine, which looks healthy. I was so sad my lupine from last year didn’t make it over. I got this small nepeta last year, (catmint) and it is all, hey I am the boss of you, bullying the blue quadrant. I did a bit of a Chelsea chop on it yesterday.
I started a variety of Cosmo seeds here at home on Sunday even though I thought it might be too late. They were up in three days! I also sowed some of the same seeds in the garden so I am curious about if they will come up. My record with starting things at home is mixed. I am looking at you, delphiniums…
My mood has been mixed this last week. I sure hope I can bolster it in these waning days of my oh so precious week off.
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