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By Molly:
My life currently revolves around one thing: the Bobolink garden. Specifically, I am concentrating on not murdering the plants that will become a significant source of the co-op’s food in the coming year.
Let me explain - with Juan and Amy off in Florida visiting relatives and with Cecil volunteering in India, I have become the de facto caretaker of Bobolink’s garden. This would not be a problem except that
a) I have never successfully cared for anything in my life (it’s true – in first grade I took the class gerbils home for the weekend and my dog ate them), and
b) my sole experience with gardening comes from looking after my mother’s flowers as she traveled. This usually involved forgetting to water until moments before her return, at which point I would desperately flood them into oblivion and then loudly assert my bewilderment at their poor health (Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, I have no idea why the hydrangeas died while you were in Savannah – you know, they were looking kind of spotty even before you left, and I hear that there’s some sort of mite going around, and now that I think of it I definitely remember seeing those neighbor kids hanging about, looking all shifty-eyed and devious. If I were you I would totally call their parents.).
Not wanting to let anyone down, I find myself panicking at the most mundane of situations and harassing my more experienced neighbors for advice (“It’s an emergency! This tomato plant is slightly shorter than the others!”). Lucky for me, people have been remarkably tolerant of my inexperience (“no, Molly, that’s not a parsnip. That’s hemlock.”), and I have so far managed to muddle through without any major disasters.
While I’ve been driving myself batty over the garden, the more sensible Rabbits have actually managed to have a nice week. Alline hosted a sewing circle at her house on Monday before she and Kurt departed, and on Wednesday the common house held a showing of the movie Henry VIII. Saturday was relatively busy, with several of us making the trip to the Dog & Gun in the morning and others heading out to roller skate that evening.
Now that the weather has warmed up we’re hosting regular tours again, and this week saw couple of groups come through – one on the regular Saturday tour, and a gaggle of students from Truman who came during a break before their finals. It’s always nice to see people interested in learning more about what we do at DR, and I encourage any curious parties to contact us - we have tours on the second and fourth Saturday of every month, with the next one on the 27th.
If you ever want to say ‘hi’, I’m the one hyperventilating over by the tomatoes.
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