Grow Memphis Day 5

Day 5

We made our way this morning through town to a community garden near the Rhodes College campus. The garden is run and funded by Rhodes College. Random fact: Rhodes College has a great hall that looks similar to Hogwarts! It is also a really pretty campus with lots of old beautiful brick buildings. We met one of their volunteers, Chelsea. She said that it was difficult to get a lot of volunteers from the college because of the area that the garden is a high drug trafficking area. Sara, Shannon and Chelsea began working on a wooden fence in front of the plot of land with the contractor. By the end of the day they had finished their first phase of work by getting the main posts secured in the ground with cement. While they were working on the fence, the rest of us weeded seven of the nine beds. 


After an hour or so of working, volunteers from a local church came to help plant greens and tomatoes. It was great to see members of the community helping out in the garden. I think and hope that because the garden is there, the neighbors will be more intrigued to garden and be proud of their garden. I think that there is definitely a chance that a community garden can (well, I hope) help out an area. Perhaps this garden will help promote a sense of community and decrease the amount of drug trafficking. I don’t know if there is any proven statistic on that but it is something that I hope and think could become possible. Even though the people from the church were there for community service hours, I thought that it was still beneficial for them to be exposed to the idea of helping out in the community, especially through an urban garden. The best part of any garden is that people can easily eat what they create. These volunteers can see the progress that they’ve made and can it too! Anyway, we finished weeding and planted more seeds—wildflowers in the front of the beds, broccoli, and more greens.

Flat Jay and the injured bumper

            We left the garden around noon and made our way to a park… oh wait. Actually we had an issue on our way there. We were going to go to Peabody Park but nearly made it through an intersection then got into a fender bender. It was a chain reaction between three cars. Long story short, we met a nice and sarcastic cop and ate lunch in the parking lot of a gas station. We walked back to the church, only a few blocks away from the accident site. 

The cop really wanted a photo with us

We attempted to go to a psychic but it was way too expensive. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the church, picked up the rental car, and had dinner. After dinner, we adventured through town and got lost on the way to Whole Foods and Target. Now we’re back at the church having very, very interesting conversations. 

I will leave you with this, "Nnnoooo!"