Taking a hill

This week the organic garden took a backseat to a barren hillside on campus.  These photos show the before and after but there's no good way to show the hard work a volunteer group from John Deere put in. This hill is steeper than it looks in the photos.  I, personally, wound up doing a belly-slide down as I attempted to hand a juniper to one volunteer at the top.  Throw in our strange, hard-packed, eroded combination of clay, sand and concrete and it was a good thing these folks had John Deere's products to work with!  Even at that we had to rent a jack-hammer to dig the holes!  I am not exaggerating when I say these folks worked hard. 

Truly it was a little surreal.  This was one hardy group, cheerful, fearless and willing.  Our director of development, Stephanie Suarez, set up the venture and put in a 12-hour day.  And she's a little thing.  The residents helped, too, happily passing up buckets of composted chicken manure as needed.

I lead an interesting life.