garden party
We will never get "Yard of the Month."
We never expected to lease this little house as long as we have. But as it turns out, it is a sweet home on a lovely street with kind neighbors and kids. It sits next to a park and the park is next to the elementary school that our son attends. School starts at 7:45 am...we leave at 7:38. It's awesome.
A few days ago the Parks and Rec department put down new mulch on the playground..right when the kids were getting out of school. Not a good idea. Obviously ordered by someone who doesn't have elementary age children who like to run in piles of stuff and have mild asthma. They got the clue to stop when the Bobcat had to dodge the kindergarten. The moms just shook their heads and mused on how many, many hours of summer there were and what a great idea it would have been to have that done by..oh let's say by the 1st day of school. Who runs this place? The dust finally cleared and I had a thought. Why not make this huge wide open space (where the mulch pile stood), that now is just home to the fire ants, a community garden?
I would love to see people come by and tend the garden. It would almost be like the olden days. We could all put on our gloves and boots and sow rows of beans and cabbage. We could create a green area where the neighborhood could bond over hot cider and sit on hay bales. We could watch the kids run through the rows of corn, like a scene from a Lifetime movie..without the drama and the cheating. It would be a little Shangri-La in the middle of suburbia. We would be featured on Home and Garden TV, as a forward thinking community. We would then jump into turning our front yards into herb gardens and sell our goods to the rest of Austin. We all would have rain barrel collectors and solar panels on our roofs. We would all trade in 1 car and opt to take the rail to work..and buy 3 or more bikes for our family rides in the evenings. We would have 1 wind turbine at the front of the subdivision that provided power to the homes. We would share fresh eggs and goat cheese with our neighbors. Martha Stewart would come and do a show from our bountiful playland, using fresh vegetables and fruit that she picked from the Children's Garden. She would hire me and the boys to do the music, my friend Shelly to quilt while Martha talked, Michelle to scrapbook the whole experience and Dave to lead a community karaoke ..just for fun. The people who built the pool behind us would not be invited, because when they were building the pool last summer, they made a point to go to all of the neighbor's houses that would be affected, and told them they would have a big party, when it is all finished. We are still waiting our invite (as we hear them swimming for a year now), so until then, they can not come to the garden, karaoke, Martha veggie party. We would hire stilt walkers, clowns and bring in an outdoor movie screen to show Field of Dreams in the park next to the garden, for our Big Harvest Celebration. We would start a trend that would heal the entire ennui that sneaks in when one is just trying to make a living and support a family. It will be a grand accomplishment and one that we, as a community family, did together.
Did you ever see the movie A Christmas Story? Do you remember the part when Ralphie turns in his "theme" and dreams about how glorious the teacher's reception to it would be? Remember the flowers she threw and how his distant stare was accompanied by a dumb smile, because he couldn't hear the kids laughing at him, while lost in his daydream? Then he suddenly snaps out of it? Yeah..that's how I felt sitting on the bench in the park when the Bobcat started up again. It was not a gentle return to reality.. in fact, it was a quick descent to renterland.
I sulked slowly back through the vacant field where Martha could have stood next to the climbing blackberries and on to our sad grass..where it crunched when I walked across it.
We will live that vision one day. I believe it. We will invite you to the party as well, oh believers in the dream. In fact, I am going to start a compost pile near the neighbors fence with the pool tomorrow..just to tempt fate.
Thursday 10:37 pm
We never expected to lease this little house as long as we have. But as it turns out, it is a sweet home on a lovely street with kind neighbors and kids. It sits next to a park and the park is next to the elementary school that our son attends. School starts at 7:45 am...we leave at 7:38. It's awesome.
A few days ago the Parks and Rec department put down new mulch on the playground..right when the kids were getting out of school. Not a good idea. Obviously ordered by someone who doesn't have elementary age children who like to run in piles of stuff and have mild asthma. They got the clue to stop when the Bobcat had to dodge the kindergarten. The moms just shook their heads and mused on how many, many hours of summer there were and what a great idea it would have been to have that done by..oh let's say by the 1st day of school. Who runs this place? The dust finally cleared and I had a thought. Why not make this huge wide open space (where the mulch pile stood), that now is just home to the fire ants, a community garden?
I would love to see people come by and tend the garden. It would almost be like the olden days. We could all put on our gloves and boots and sow rows of beans and cabbage. We could create a green area where the neighborhood could bond over hot cider and sit on hay bales. We could watch the kids run through the rows of corn, like a scene from a Lifetime movie..without the drama and the cheating. It would be a little Shangri-La in the middle of suburbia. We would be featured on Home and Garden TV, as a forward thinking community. We would then jump into turning our front yards into herb gardens and sell our goods to the rest of Austin. We all would have rain barrel collectors and solar panels on our roofs. We would all trade in 1 car and opt to take the rail to work..and buy 3 or more bikes for our family rides in the evenings. We would have 1 wind turbine at the front of the subdivision that provided power to the homes. We would share fresh eggs and goat cheese with our neighbors. Martha Stewart would come and do a show from our bountiful playland, using fresh vegetables and fruit that she picked from the Children's Garden. She would hire me and the boys to do the music, my friend Shelly to quilt while Martha talked, Michelle to scrapbook the whole experience and Dave to lead a community karaoke ..just for fun. The people who built the pool behind us would not be invited, because when they were building the pool last summer, they made a point to go to all of the neighbor's houses that would be affected, and told them they would have a big party, when it is all finished. We are still waiting our invite (as we hear them swimming for a year now), so until then, they can not come to the garden, karaoke, Martha veggie party. We would hire stilt walkers, clowns and bring in an outdoor movie screen to show Field of Dreams in the park next to the garden, for our Big Harvest Celebration. We would start a trend that would heal the entire ennui that sneaks in when one is just trying to make a living and support a family. It will be a grand accomplishment and one that we, as a community family, did together.
Did you ever see the movie A Christmas Story? Do you remember the part when Ralphie turns in his "theme" and dreams about how glorious the teacher's reception to it would be? Remember the flowers she threw and how his distant stare was accompanied by a dumb smile, because he couldn't hear the kids laughing at him, while lost in his daydream? Then he suddenly snaps out of it? Yeah..that's how I felt sitting on the bench in the park when the Bobcat started up again. It was not a gentle return to reality.. in fact, it was a quick descent to renterland.
I sulked slowly back through the vacant field where Martha could have stood next to the climbing blackberries and on to our sad grass..where it crunched when I walked across it.
We will live that vision one day. I believe it. We will invite you to the party as well, oh believers in the dream. In fact, I am going to start a compost pile near the neighbors fence with the pool tomorrow..just to tempt fate.
Thursday 10:37 pm
YOU ARE A HOOT.... and I would be so disappointed if you invited the pool people to your fantasy, that would be so NOT RIGHT...
ReplyDeleteBut I sure would love to live in that yester-world.. and enjoy all the fruits of our labor. wouldn't life be wonderful.. lets go back there again some time okay???
Bless you Tina love ya Patricia
That sounds like a great place to live. We should all pick a town in the Hill Country and all move there!
ReplyDelete