Our Peace Park/Youth Farm Community Garden dedication event is tonight,
3110 Blaisdell Ave. S., 115 W. 31st. St., and 3121 Pillsbury Ave. S.
There's an outdoor reception at 6:00 and Council Member Dan Niziolek
will cut a ribbon at 6:30. Sans thunderboomers, I hope!
Youth Farm is providing light refreshments and I do believe Police
Reserve band member and fellow resident Melody Jackson will provide some
incidental music early on. The sunflowers started under lights are
getting ready to open. Many hundreds of donated plants are safely in the
ground. The resident gardeners and their Youth Farm counterparts have
been tending individual plots in the community garden. Countless
wheelbarrow loads of topsoil, compost materials and woodchips have been
trundled about by many youthful hands and one way or another the
adjacent lawn and fenceline areas are sprouting places for folks to sit
comfortably whatever their time of life.
There are too many people and institutions to thank for this bounty in a
simple email. Youth Farm has a souvenir program for that and something
of a wish list for the future. What strikes me personally is the change
in my fellow residents in public housing: there is ownership now where a
sense of isolation once prevailed.
Lyndale Neighborhood folks have been here twice by invitation recently,
once for a pre-primary city council candidate forum last fall and again
in January, 2002 when we had a community meeting about keeping the
gardens rather than seeing new housing shoehorned into the greenspace
amenity. Tonight we are privileged to host the LNA annual meeting, where
the point can again be emphasized that we public housing residents are
as much a part of Lyndale as the homeowners, other renters, and
businesspeople that will take part in this community get-together. Never
mind the differences in income, language and culture! This is about
reinforcing and celebrating our sense of place: who we are and where we
live as a community with many shared values.
Stop by if you like this evening. We won't make such a big deal of the
outside event tonight but plan for National Night Out on August 6 for a
more extended event with live music, plenty of food, a farmers market
with locally grown produce, and garden tours when all these young plants
are in full bloom. Remember, please, no parking onsite tonight. One
solution is to park over by KMart and think about the proposed seven
lanes of Lake St. traffic that may well challenge elderly and disabled
pedestrians and family members with young children in tow as the
Nicollet-Lake development takes form.
Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten
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