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After having an incredible Saturday last week at the SoCal roundup, I had another amazing Saturday. An organization named RockCorp which promotes volunteer work among teens came to our community garden with LA radio station KRoc and did a massive garden cleanup. It was a last minute decision that our garden would be the garden in LA that Rockcorp would help "renew". We were expecting 20 to 40 teens to show up, instead we got almost 100! I lost count at 92. The LA Times was there as well, along with our city cousel representative for the area who said that gardening was not important enough of a topic to put money aside for.
I was given an award by the city counsel woman Jan Perry for my committment to the garden and for all of the work that me, Mr. Jones and his wife have done to mantain the garden including donating most the produce grown to local families who are financially challenged. Don't you know as she handed me and the Jones' our certificate, I asked her about funding for the garden before I would look at the camera and take the publicity shot she wanted. She asked if we could take the picture first, and I told her no, we can take the picture after she committed to providing the funding that I found out was put in her budget to be provided to us in the amount of $500 per month! Hmmm, I wonder whose pocket it made its way into? She said I should email her and she would look into it, so I turned, smiled at the camera, and then turned back to her when I saw the reporter from the LA Times' boom man (sound recorder) put the microphone above our heads and told her that I had emailed her numerous times, and called even more. In short, I got her to committ to not only sending us our monthly allowance, but also, fresh soil, compost, redwood chips, and wood to make more boxes in the garden.
The volunteers were sweet, but you can imagine almost 100 13-20 years olds who have never gardened before in their lives pulling up all of your plant. Sorry I meant weeds. But they didn't know the difference, and a lot of them didn't think to ask first (like what teen does) so we lost a lot of plants. 3 large zuccnini's for which one young lady said, she thought it was a giant green tumbleweed! In all, we lost about 18 healthy producing plants, but we have a garden that is almost weed free (and tumbleweed free...lol)! The kids received a pizza lunch and concert tickets to some big rock concert along with a t-shirt, and some walked away with plants that I gave them to plant at home in their parents garden. Not only did they weed, they painted our shed and our front and back gates, cleaned up the street and the alley, took out all of the trash for us that they had collected, and pruned our fruit tree, well actually, one of the mom's that came with her daughter did the pruning, teens and shears, I don't think so. Oh, and one parent busted our main waterline by hoeing too deeply, so we had to completely replace that, but had plenty of help on hand to do so. Despite the mishaps, it was great. I had fun showing the kids new things, and some of them learned new thing, some were already gardening experts and we all had a great day.
Well enough chat, here are the before pics of the garden:
Click the image for an enlarged view.
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