Greetings from Seattle!

I made a pleasant discovery just a few blocks from my home this week:

Peasful pods resting under a burlap quilt.

Corn practicing yoga.

And happy (and mustachioed) tomatoes keeping an eye on things.

What’s going on here?

This is a Seattle park on the corner of two busy streets. This .21 acre space used to be a parking lot, but in 2008 the Seattle Parks Department decided to turn it into a green space. Unpaving Paradise, a project started by the Capitol Hill Community Council’s Open Space Committee, has done a great deal and continues to work to raise money and community involvement in the brand new park.

The park has lawns, an area for skateboarding, and a P-Patch. P-Patches are community gardens, and there are 73 of them in Seattle! You can read more about the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Community Gardening Program here, but here’s just some of what they do: grow community, practice organic gardening, feed the hungry, and improve access to organic, culturally appropriate, and local food!

Amazing stuff!

The P-Patch is under a coffee bean sack quilt for the winter, but I can’t wait to see (and be a part of!) how the garden grows once spring rolls around and we wake up those peas!