Floods at the Gardens

It may not be official, but it feels to me that we should have set some sort of record in Spring rainfall this year, and it is no surprise here that we have some flooded areas at our Happy Valley Community Gardens. I took a little stroll around the soaked grassy paths between the individual garden plots and snapped a few photos of some I found the most intriguing. In reality, just blooming weeds and dead plants from last fall reflecting in a small trench dug around a raised bed without a frame, this garden reminded me of canals running through more exotic lands.

While there were many pools of rain water on this black tarp and the ground around it was extremely soggy, the fact that there were so many water logged pallet boards and huge clumps of sod stashed in this particular garden, I found it eery in a way - like maybe there was something ugly hiding under that huge black tarp that might come out and prowl the gardens only at night. I am curious now to see what really grows there in the summer.

This garden has been a work in progress for two years now and has challenged as many gardeners. Last year, a man and his son put in the back breaking labor of turning the sod with a shovel. Very hard work in such heavy, water soaked clay! Rows of corn and spinach were planted, only to remain mutant dwarfs with the corn tassling once it reached six inches tall. We have a new gardener there this year, a college student looking young lady that spent several days turning the soil once again, then built this raised bed and plastic covered hoop structure. She lugged in those orange buckets filled with something to mix into that soil. She has worked extremely hard so far, and I feel deserves to be the very first one in our community gardens to harvest this season's tender fresh vegetables.

This is a very pretty little garden and I like the raised beds with plenty of sawdust put down in the walkway to make it passable once you figure out how to get past the flooding over the slate tiled walkway at the entry. The gardener here has a small bed of some of the prettiest tulips I have ever seen. She told me once that she brought those tulips with her when she moved to Washington State from a state far far away.

Scattered randomly with newspapers tossed onto the walkways and over the raised beds, this was a rather interesting garden with all its puddles. Newspaper decomposes rather fast, but I'm a little curious what their goal could be and wonder what they were thinking.

This is my Garden Nbr. 02, and as you can see, I have an area that is flooded too. It might have taken me half a bale of straw just to fill in that low spot, but rather than use straw for fill, I have decided to pick up a bag of the most inexpensive dirt from a local garden center to dump in that hole before covering that portion of my path with straw.