Mar-Duke Farms: The Next Adventure

Wow, how time flies.  My last post was in 2012 and occurred approximately three days before a giant wind storm collapsed my beautiful pond cover into the pond. This was immediately followed by a  cold snap that froze the mangled mess of plastic partially under the ice for the entire winter.   It was discouraging at first.  Then I realized I didn't have a prayer to fix it until the spring thaw so I could ignore it the entire winter.   I didn't have much hope for the fish but they lived!  Proof yet again that understocking a pond leaves a lot of room for user error.



Pond cover collapse was not the reason for my long absence.  I have nothing more interesting to offer than I got busy and this blog dropped below the list of achievable items in my daily list of to dos.  I've missed it occasionally, toyed with the idea of picking it up occasionally but have not wanted to do that until I was sure I was back in for another decent run.  Finally, today, I think I am.

I've been inspired to take on a new adventure.  It began yesterday morning when on an impulse I googled the park district's community garden allotment site to see if they still had plots for spring/summer rental.  Actually it probably began three days prior when I raised the notion of a few raised beds in the one area of my yard with decent all day sun and was told by my spousal unit that that would "look stupid".  My yard is full of trees and the lack of enough full sun positions has been an ongoing source of frustration for me.   Yesterday morning I decide that rather than start a raised bed battle, I would check into community gardening plot rental.

I googled Mar-Duke farms (the community garden plot) at 8:57am on 3/5/2016.  The message that came up was that plot rental was occurring on 3/5/2016 from 9-10am.  Gah! My panicked brain decided that that message meant that I had 1 hour to make it happen this year (probably less because I was envisioning arriving tail end to a hopeless giant line of people). It was a sign to get moving!  I got ready in record time, making it to the Park District by 9:30am.  I broke the speed limit and raced through the parking lot for no reason.  There were 4 people in the room.  My adrenaline was still going though so I eyed the people in the room (clearly my competition) and gah! One of the people, definitely had his eye on the plot I immediately decided I wanted most (after checking out the plot map for a whole 3 minutes).  Please note that my crazy was completely unwarranted since there are 450 plots and only about 1/3 were gone when I got there. Yes, I am embarrassed.   I rushed to complete the paperwork.  Alas, tall guy still got the one I wanted most.  The one right next to the spigot.

I appeased myself by grabbing the one next door and its neighbor!  Yes that's right.  I went for one plot and left with two plots.  Two plots that are 20x30' EACH.  About two minutes after paying the $68 per plot I realized that , whoa.  That is way more space than I am used to gardening.  WAY more space.  I then did the only logical thing I could do.  I went home, examined my enormous box-o-seeds.  Acknowledged that I had enough seeds to plant 5 times the area of my two new plots.  Ignored that fact and went out an bought more seeds.

This should be an interesting season.