Woke up, got the kids off to school, and went back to bed to finish reading Thomas’s _The Hate U Give_. Finished book, wiped tears away, going to make some notes for my own YA.
Then go back to prepping questions for a doctoral student’s dissertation defense @ noon today. Later today, meeting some friends to talk to them about maybe joining the Garden Club; I’m hopeful that they’ll have both time and energy to be more involved, maybe work on one of the bigger projects. (Julie, Nara, Amanda — if you happen to be free @ 3:30 today and want to join us at Serenitea, I’d love to talk gardens with you too.)
There’s a lot the Garden Club could do, but it could use an injection of energy from younger members. We should do more partnering with all the other local garden organizations for a start — West Cook Wild Ones, the Deep Roots Project, the Forest Park Community Garden, etc. I have daydreams about doing more with community gardens, native gardening, reaching out to Austin gardeners, etc.
I had an idea last summer for a project — border gardens, partnering people on both sides of Oak Park’s borders (so, for example, on the west and east sides of Austin), getting donations of time and money and plants and know-how to help people on the borders add more flowers to their gardens. Haven’t had time to seriously look into it yet, but I don’t want to forget about it, as I think it could be a really nice way to start building partnerships and community with our neighbors. We could gather mums and bulbs in the autumn, for example, and plant both; I can see ribbons of color extending around Oak Park. Well, we’ll see.