The Joiner

I have become quite the joiner this past week! Although I love the virtual community of gardeners, I have been searching for ways to join a community of gardeners here in Portland. It’s proven more challenging than I first anticipated.

I began the search with gardening clubs. To date, I have found only a couple gardening clubs and their members are mostly 60+. Probably the same women from the picture here. But there are all these hip chicks blogging about their cool gardens in other cities. Where are they all hiding in this city?

This week turned up some good options for meeting other cool, hip chicks that garden. First, the people organizing this year’s Tour de Coops sent out an email with more details on the tour day and a pre-tour get together for everyone on the tour. Should be a great opportunity to share some beers and chicken stories with other city chicken-keepers.

I was a little worried they somehow forgot me since the last time I heard from them was in late-February. Glad the tour is still happening and we are still on it. Who knows how many people will come through our yard, but it’s still a fun reason to talk chicken and some great motivation for getting the coop looking nice.

I discovered there is a blog on OregonLive.com, which is a fairly clutter local website, that is specifically about the Foster-Powell neighborhood we live near. The woman who writes it was talking about a Fo-Po Garden Tour. What an awesome idea! Although we are technically out of the neighborhood, she is happy to include us on the tour as well. This is the first year, and there probably won’t be a ton of people coming through, but it’s another fun thing to participate in. Perhaps we can meet some cool local neighbors and it’s a great excuse to finish our patio and get the yard up to snuff.

The last thing I’ve joined this week is a little bigger of a commitment, but I am really excited about it. I decided I need to support our local Lents International Farmer’s Market more this summer. It’s always a little hard though because most of what they sell I have coming out my ears already in my own backyard. So instead I found the volunteer coordinator and I signed up to help! I will help host the community booth about three times over the season. The market is on Sundays, beginning June 16th, from 9am-2pm. It is really, really small right now, but it will only get bigger and better if we chip in to help.

Actually, there is one more thing. My ceramics studio, Radius Studio, will be participating in the First Friday Art Walk through SE Portland. Not sure if I can get my stuff together in time for this Friday’s event, but I will keep you guys posted. My basement is jam packed with ceramic creations and this should be a good way to liquidate. It will also be motivation to keep throwing more pots, since I now have a way to cycle them through. I’m a little nervous about it. Well, a lot nervous about it. But when I get the confidence and organization sorted out, I will keep you all posted on the event.

I would love to do even more, but I don’t want to stretch myself too thin. This is why I will never experiment with speed, by the way. It’s easy for me to see how addicting it would be if I actually could do all of this. But I need to make time for lazy afternoons, bike rides, and sleep. Hopefully some of these things will lead to some new gardening friends. And that should keep me busy through those cold winter months when I can’t be outside gardening.