The First Garden in Our Apartment Complex

Our apartment complex has a strip of patchy brown grass between the parking lot and the fence that nobody ever used. In March, a few of us asked the management if we could plant a garden there. To our shock, they said yes.

We got wood from a lumber yard that donated scraps, soil from a farmer my neighbor knows, and seeds from everyone's kitchen drawers. A retired carpenter on the second floor built six raised beds in a single weekend.

Now there are tomatoes, beans, a wild amount of zucchini, marigolds, sunflowers and a little pepper patch belonging to a Salvadoran grandmother who guards it like treasure. Kids from the building water it every evening and argue about whose turn it is.

We had a harvest dinner in September in the parking lot. Thirty people, six languages, one very long table. A strip of patchy grass became the center of our little world.