So, “Bay Hills.” It was supposed to be this great community garden spot. That’s what they pitched to us, anyway. A little green oasis in the middle of all the concrete. I was actually excited at first, signed up right away.
We had these meetings, oh boy, the meetings. Everyone had an idea for “Bay Hills.” One guy wanted a Zen garden, another wanted to plant nothing but prize-winning roses. All this while the actual plot was just weeds and rubble. I remember thinking, ‘Can we just, you know, pull some weeds first?’ Getting everyone to agree on a simple layout was like pulling teeth.
I ended up doing a lot of the initial grunt work. Clearing the plot, trying to improve the soil. Because, let’s be honest, most folks were good at talking, not so much at digging. The soil there was terrible, by the way. Compacted, full of stones. I brought my own tools, my own compost. Felt like I was building those darn “hills” single-handedly sometimes.
And the rules! We had a committee, of course. They came up with a whole binder of rules. What you could plant, when you could water, how tall your sunflowers could be. It was nuts. We spent more time debating regulations than actually gardening. I saw more spreadsheets than seedlings in those early days.
Why do I bring up “Bay Hills” like it was some grand battle? Because it kind of was, in a small, silly way. It showed me how a simple idea – let’s grow some stuff together – can get tangled up in bureaucracy and, well, people just being people. Everyone means well, I guess, but getting them to pull in the same direction? That’s the real work.
We did get some stuff growing eventually. A few sad-looking tomatoes here, some determined zucchini there. It wasn’t the paradise we were promised. More like a testament to stubbornness. I learned a lot, mostly about how not to run a community project. And that if you really want hills, sometimes you just gotta build ’em yourself, without a committee watching.
