GREEN ACRES VILLAGE: We Prepare for the Return of Community Dinners!

And it’s about time!

Mid-March last year, our regular Community Dinners, like clockwork every Thursday evening for years, and so, totally taken for granted, came to a sudden, grinding halt.  As did so many other social/cultural traditions and structures, both visible and invisible. For awhile there, the whole world, all of humanity, was united — just not in a way that most humans would prefer.

Our little group, however, knew that we were extremely fortunate to be living in our little paradise during the covid conundrum. We could still be with each other (nine of us in three homes); still enjoy, celebrate, and learn from Mother Nature as she continued to nurture and bless us during that long strange year that bled into 2021 and, then, mirabile dictu! — ended with the announcement locally that crowd sizes were no longer limited to 15.

Okay! Let’s go!

So today, we spent our regular twice-weekly morning work party cleaning up the patio, in preparation for our gala re-opening on Thursday. This evening we will finish the job and string up lights for the occasion. YES!

Here’s Dan and Ethyl working over one of the patio beds.

Closer.

Andreas, Gabrielle, Tim (a dear, and hard working visitor) and Annie worked their butts off clearing out an old wire fence, and its posts (except for one that’s going to need some kind of saw), to prepare for what’s next. What is next? Here’s Annie and Tim wondering. Though you can’t see Andreas, I’m sure he’s in there somewhere, with his cutters, under the tree.

At noon, work party over, we all stood around and discussed how we wanted to design that now reclaimed area.

Should it just be a place for shade-loving plants? Or should we be able to sit in its welcoming shade, and if so, how to place a long bench or two smaller benches. “Hmmm . . . A circular arrangement? Triangular?” “But don’t we need a little path too, cutting through to the next alley?” “Yes, but that will require a bridge, since this place, which water drains into [from the Overhill backyard], needs a ditch [leading to the pond]. And I don’t want it [the bridge] to be stone, since stones bury themselves so easily . . .” On and on. Everybody had an impassioned opinion, which, since we did come to an agreement, was cool. (Yes to everything, plants, path, and benches).

Oh, and speaking of stones burying themselves, a little surprise was unearthed from this area. The top to a crock dated 1928!

Our December 2020 decision to not have another top-down farm manager, but to instead do it ourselves, as a horizontal cooperative group of equals, is bearing fruit already. Our move from Capricorn hierarchy to Aquarian networking — works! At least so far, though we do have to watch out for chaos, when there’s not enough communication.

We decided to cover beds in both main garden and our house gardens with straw this year, to help hold moisture longer.

And Gabrielle suggested we offer plants from our plant sale to our Community Dinner guests first this Thursday evening, before opening to the public at large.

That’s Dan, in the background, heading out to work at the public library after work party in the garden. Notice the weird bird bath with brackish water? That’s going to get drained and move elsewhere, before Thursday!

We managed to clean, sharpen, and reorganize all our tools over the winter, both large and small. Here’s some of the large ones.

The newly opened kiwi leaves, which had withered and died after that one late frost, came back — and they seem even more abundant than before, offering shade and, hopefully, a bit of fruit over the Overhill front porch.

I’ve planted a bunch of perennials around. here’s one of the little gardens, by the front garden gate.

But then, of course, nothing can top the peonies, when they decide to bloom, which they are doing, all over town. Here’s ours, outside at the corner of Overhill and DeKist, fronting the main garden.

Hearts full of gratitude, all around!