Neighborly Visit and a newspaper article

This morning I picked up the town newspaper - the "Keller Citizen" - front page article was entitled  "Community Garden Plants Seeds of Friendship".  Ha!  ... is this a 'sign'?   No idea - but definitely encouraging!  Wrote to the author (Susan McFarland of the Star-Telegram) to thank her for writing about it , and asked if she might have run into some useful resources about community gardens.

Also, I finally found the Petersons home!   Great people - they were outside gardening even!   The weather was perfect, and so we had a nice little chat about what they thought of the idea.

They liked it, in principle, but they also brought up some important challenges:

1) You will either have to plant indigenous plants that don't require lots of auxilliary watering (by hose, sprinkler system, etc.) -- or you will have to find a way to get water to the site.   Definitely important. Maybe we could put in a Well?  Wells can cost thousands of dollars...   Hmmm.  Have to find another solution.

2) The people in our neighborhood are only moderately interested in growing things to eat... it's just too easy to buy your produce at the grocery store.  You might face an uphill battle trying to get them to tend a garden during the summer heat.

3) The property is owned by the city - whatever you would like to do, you should probably get the city's approval on it, and work with them, rather than against and/or behind them.

They suggested I might also stop by the neighorhood HOA President's home to see what she thought could be done.  Nice lady - pleasant home.   Paid her a short visit.  She's a reluctant neighborhood president -- did it because no-one else would.  She's just beginning to get this gardening thing down.  Would rather not over-subscribe herself by taking a leadership role.   Definitely all reasonable/understandable reservations.  

She seems to think that the sense of 'community' in this neighborhood has suffered - there's very little neighborly association that occurs here.  Hmmm - that would definitely be a challenge.   Maybe a community garden could be a focal point for turning a page?  Her assessment was that most people in the neighborhood wouldn't be interested -- they'd rather pay to have the land-scaping at the neighborhood entrance done rather than get a coalition of neighbors involved and save money.   They are pretty dis-engaged when it comes to gardening/yard-work.    Alright... some work needs to be done there.   A community garden could definitely help there, but it's not a panacea, and some 'prep-work' might need to be done before people really buy into the idea.

More work/research/preparation!

Get the word out going door to door?  Fliers?  Hold an informational meeting?  All of the above?   That is going to take some time -- not sure whether or not it will pay off...   Still the idea is persistent.  

Well - roads are for journeys, not just destinations -- so I'll try to learn from the process, regardless of the end result!