* June 23rd Meeting Notes

Dearest Gardeners:

My deepest apologies for the prolonged delay in getting out the notes from the last garden meeting. Itdoes not mean that I love you any less as gardeners, simply that my secretarial skills are lacking.

First and foremost, Hollenback Community Garden remains the top garden in the universe (as well as the underverse, the monoverse, and the otherverse).

Congratulations.

Updates:

Sarah P. went to the BQLT Operations Committee Meeting.

- They are discussing coming up with a systematic method

with the BQLT to test the soil in all 34 member

gardens. They also discussed operations stuff for the

land trust and seem to be formulating a way to make

the gardens financially independent. She will report

back as to how both of these progress. People at BQLT

know our garden and are impressed that we can get such

big work crews together. I am too.

Make Music New York!

- Gardener Allen was our point person and mastermind

behind Hollenback's part in New York’s first Make

Music New York Festival. We hosted I-Crisis, and in

keeping with most of our musical events, it poured

rain. However, not before I-Crisis embodied rock and

roll, kicking out three jams on electrified

instruments in a lightning storm. There was a great

opening poet, and Allen set the mood spinning some

soul classics on 45 (Say Allen, can I borrow a copy of

your "Hey Soul Classics"?). Thanks to Allen for his

stewardship, to Pete for his grillmanship and to

everyone who came out.

Children at Hollenback

- School children from P.S.11 was treated to narrated

tours of the garden at the hands of Mark and Hannah

(and one day with Sarah's mom). There were two days of

tours given to classes ranging from kindergarten to

fourth grade - about 10 classes in all. Each class

did something slightly different, but the tours mostly

revolved around a sensory exploration of the garden.

The students and the teachers and the gardeners all

had a great time, and Mark now has children screaming

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, Miiiiiiisssssterrrrrrrrrrrrr

Maaaaaaaaaaark!" everywhere he goes.

Our Neighbor and Our Compost:

- At the previous meeting we discussed complaints lodged

with the Washington Avenue Block Association by our new neighbor,

Kathleen. Kathleen is the recent

owner of the carriage house on Waverly, right behind

the garden, and more specifically, the compost. After

our last meeting, Mark met with Kathleen. In our

ongoing attempts to mitigate the problems arising

(ahem) from the compost pile in the back of the

garden, in an effort to work with our new neighbor,

and (perhaps most importantly) to maximize our

accessible common space, the garden voted to move the

working compost piles to the center of the garden

behind the apple tree.

The workdays for doing this were scheduled for the

following Tuesday and Thursday nights. They were

successful. Go look at how much space there is in the

back of the garden.

As we move forward, we’re hoping to find a balance

that makes our neighbor content, continue to provide an

alternative process for community food waste, let’s the garden

maximize its community open space, and enables us to

reap the benefits of our legendary compost.

Food Donations:

- As a reminder, we have discussed combining the

contributions of any willing gardeners who wanted to

donate extra food to a soup kitchen or food pantry.

If any interested gardeners know they will be out of

town for any length of time this summer, let Mark know

if you want to donate some food during any time you

may be away from the city.

Budget Report:

Pirate Andy reported that we’ve still got some money

in the bank after a few outlays for our recent

composting toilet and water tank projects. Mostly,

though, PLEASE PAY YOUR DUES. It’s only $10/summer.

Pure, unadulterated happiness is cheap at Hollenback.

Our First Event

- Though Mark and Cara will be out of town, it was

suggested that July 21st be our first community event

of the summer. The idea of a movie night was proposed.

The idea was to make sure we are not letting our

amazing, but strenuous, construction tasks keep us

from having lively community events. It seemed

unlikely that anyone would step forward to spearhead

this event, but from the ashes there has arisen...

Allen Thayer. We thank him beforehand for

volunteering to coordinate our group efforts to make

this a wonderful event. So stay tuned for more about

the group effort he will need from us.

See everyone on July 21st at the meeting.

Secretarially,

Mike D. (with some additions by Mark)