Grow Memphis Day 6

 Today was our second to last day of working with Grow Memphis. We had a later start today—10 am! We left, on time for once, and made our way to the garden… or so we thought. We drove into a parking lot of a church and were awfully confused because we couldn’t see any sort of garden. We were confused because not only was there not a garden but also, no one was there yet. Sara called the woman in charge of the “garden”, Albertha. She answered in confusion because she assumed that because of the late night and early morning rain that we wouldn’t want to garden. That was definitely not the case! We knew that because it rained, we wouldn’t be able to do as much but knew that we could make some amount of difference today. Twenty minutes later, Albertha arrived and we drove down the street to a completely empty field covered with trash and weeds. Once again, we were confused. Albertha is only beginning her urban garden so we were able to assist her in cleaning up the two lots that she had. We ended up wacking at the weeds and picking up trash in the first open lot.  It was pretty gross! Lots of beer bottles and empty chip bags that had been there for quite some time. We even found a Dora the Explorer child’s chair and large pillow in the field. One of the members of the community came and helped wack at the weeds with us.

After around two hours of picking up trash and weed wacking, we made our way over to Albertha’s other lot. This lot was a large open field that had leaves that Albertha wanted us to get into a pile in order to begin a compost pile. There was also a sign near the street but Albertha wanted to make a bright new sign so it would be much more welcoming to the community, especially the children in the neighborhood. Since we didn’t have materials for the sign yet, Sara went with Albertha to pick up wood and paint while the rest of us went to a coffee shop to sit and have our pb&j sandwiches. For the second time, I had a natural soda that was supposed to taste kind of like Dr. Pepper but it mainly tasted like cola. Any who, we made it back to the lot. Half of us worked on the sign and the other half worked on moving leaves into the soon to be compost pile. After working on that lot, Albertha took us over to a community garden that she wants to imitate. It was beautiful! It had a bunch of beds in different shapes and sizes. There was a huge compost pile in the back and even a greenhouse. I was so jealous of how nice it looked! I hope that Albertha is able to make her garden look as good as that one did.

After our visit to the garden, we went back to the church for dinner. We had pasta with chicken and sweet potatoes. We then took a tour of our church and the carillon (yes, like the carillon in the campanile on campus). It was actually my second tour of a carillon in the past two weeks! I went to the carillon in the campanile with KU Ambassadors the week before break. They both were pretty similar besides the fact that we were able to go up to the roof of the tower at the church here. The view was great! We could see so far and it was beautiful. 

We then went back downtown to Beale Street. It was well, a failed attempt. At first we wanted to find a jazz club for Erin—fail. We just couldn’t find one that was 18+, didn’t have a cover, and well we honestly just couldn’t find one. Our second desire was an ice cream place. We walked around for what seemed to be forever but ended up still not finding one. Finally, we just drove back to the church and went to the TCBY next door. Now, some of the group is in line to see Hunger Games at midnight but Kylie, Shannon, and I are still here at the church getting to watch some basketball. Tomorrow will be our last day working for Grow Memphis :(