Lettuce Grow and Share!

Well, our community garden has come along way since its roots as a garden of little seeds, waiting to root themselves!  Now with a lush abundance of lettuce, swiss chard and cabbage springing forth, our hard work even from months in the cold has contributed to every green leaf reaching out to its solar source of life and energy.

With help from high school volunteers, we were able to load up a garage load of rock, soil and good manure (even the cows have helped!) into our newly constructed garden beds.
  The tomatoes were called for the challenge of taking on the outdoors, while the peppers and herbs were transplanted to their new tanning beds for growth.  Just as these vegetables have been growing stronger from their wiry starts, so to has our community of gardeners!  Our Sunday tradition of working and eating earth has been a source of peaceful productivity and knowledge shared amongst ourselves regarding more than just the seeds around us.  

The Backyard

Benton House was also blessed with the services of our friends at UPS  (www.ups.com), who dedicated their time till the job was done, and done well.... building the N for our now BEN BEDS!

They also helped by painting the BH logos in the gym, running electric for the food Pantry fridges, hanging the doors in our Faurot Hall and donating $10,000 to Benton House. We greatly appreciate you for all you have done to help us on our way!

To the summer's heat and thundershowers - we say cheers for helping our seeds flourish into what we have previously taken for granted in our grocery isles and for bridging the members of OUR Bridgeport community! Come unite in light.

    

Monday - June 6th Minutes
GARDEN PLANTING/SOIL : We can order more soil!  Woohoo!  Once the soil is ordered, we can work on getting some new plants out.  Also, save your plastic bottles - we use these to create little greenhouses around the plants.
CONSTRUCTION: We now have plans for a bench, plant signs and a sign encouraging our visitors and selves to keep the garden clean.
VOLUNTEERS: Benton House will be having volunteers from M-T for 9 weeks!  That means our plants will get some regular watering and upkeep.
PUBLIC RELATIONS:  Kristina and Kristin will be speaking with our Alderman to inform about our garden and our goals of helping Bridgeport be a model for urban food development through community gardens.  Stella will be working on creating us a page on Tumbler while seeing if we could get further publicity/donations through Whole Foods.  We can also work with Benton House web designers to further develop our page.
EVENTS/ACTIVITIES: EVERY Sunday is a fun work day, so come on over!  We'll keep you updated with more food workshops possibly including Zaytune and Pleasant House.  Also, we're looking into a fun mixer at Simone's soon with the possibility of movies in the garden in July/August.
NEXT MEETING: MONDAY JUNE 20th at 7 PM.  Hope to see you then!