[UrbanCropCircle] donations needed for Nicklelsville residents

[Susan Helf]

Dear fellow gardeners,
Jean Darsie and I visited Nckelsville today and brought compost, plant
starts and pots. The plant starts included one each of:
cilantro, runner beans, peas, miners' lettuce, lemon-balm tea; a couple of
sunflowers,  snapdragons and Swiss chard, and
many varieties of tomatoes. Thanks to everyone who donated pots, plants and
gloves. Thanks to Kathy for asking Swanson's
for many many bags of compost, which she has stored in her garage.

Nicklesville is a small muddy encampment below the noisy intersection of S.
129th St. and Martin Luther King Way S.
The Nickelodeons  will set up their pots on a big slab of concrete next to
the cyclone fence along MLK Way. The area is south-facing
and sunny.

About 80 adults live in tents covered by big blue tarps. They have three
port-a-potties and a covered kitchen area.
They cook over BBQs. The nearby 7-11 store provides them with free water,
which they have to haul across a busy street.
Their little garden will not produce enough food for so many people.

I said I would come back with more plants, pots and soil. Jean and I only
had space in our cars for 4 of the dozen or
so bags of compost from Kathy's garage. The Nickleodeons think they will
be moved to a long-term (two years) site in August,
right in the middle of harvest season. They will grow everything in pots
that they can take the garden to their new home

Here's what they need: (plant starts of seeds - whatever you have)

strawberry  (I have extra plants)
squash
zucchini
peppers
carrots
Cosmos
Echinacea
shasta daisies
more beans
onions

Since we are going back with more gardening stuff, I asked them what else
they needed.  They could use:

Blankets, sleeping bags, all kinds and sizes of socks,
Big Blue Tarps, scrap lumber, especially plywood, to walk on across
the muddy ground; batteries, especially AA, AAA, C and D;
men's boxer shorts, men's shoes size 16, women's shoes size 9,
over-the-counter remedies like cough syrup, ibuprofin, aspirin, band-aids;
used kennels for their small dogs, size L rain jackets and fleece jackets.

If everybody brought to our next UCC meeting, say, one pair of socks, or a
package of batteries, or a pack of seeds, we'd have
a lot of stuff to donate to the Nickelodeons. Please bring what you
can on Monday, June 7, I am willing to deliver the stuff to the
Nickelodeons. If there are a lot of donations, it would be helpful to have a
person with a station wagon help with delivery.

Thanks for your generosity.

Susan



"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
-Margaret Atwood
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