I've Got Good News And I've Got Bad News
First, the good news. We received word on Monday November 3rd that we CAN use the Harlem site for the new community garden. This has taken much longer than any of us imagined, although I'm not sure why I would imagine anything dealing with the State of Illinois would take less than like a million years! The bad news is that the site is basically a big ole pile of rubble. (As a side-note, I think the word "rubble" is seriously under-used and under-appreciated and I personally plan to use it every chance I get for a while.) As Jessica described in her post about taking the soil test samples , there is only about 4 inches of dirt, then she hit rubble in every spot she sampled. I know it'd be much easier if this site was pure rice dirt just waiting to be planted, but that's usually not the reality of community gardens. The idea is usually to take a spot that nobody wants and turn it into something beautiful for the community to enjoy and to create a place wher