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The community came to the Angie's ListCommunityGarden this weekend.
A dozen or so of the members of the inaugural Angie’s List Garden Club showed up Saturday to deal with a small mountain of soil and a pick-up truck of compost. Their plan was to spread the soil and compost and then plant more than 200 different vegetable and herb seedlings.
Armed only with shovels, rakes and spades, they clearly underestimated the job before them. But they were game for it. The blisters and sweat had only just started to emerge when they heard the rumble of a motor.
They looked up to see Phil Chambers driving a John Deer tractor with a shovel attached to the front, and he was heading straight for them.
Phil was a member of the Angie's List campus neighborhood before Angie's List had leased its first office space, but few of the Angie’s List staff had met him. So to the garden crew, he was just a neighborhood guy who could be planning to do a little landscaping work on his own property. Or, as they all silently hoped, he wasn’t heading anywhere but their little plot of land.
He didn’t disappoint. In less than an hour, he'd spread the dirt and asked when more was coming so he could be prepared for round two. (And yes, there will be a round two. As big as the mountain of dirt seemed, it covered only part of the garden area...)
The Garden Clubbers who were there this weekend are sure they'd still be out there pushing dirt had it not been for Phil and his John Deere. Phil is their new best friend and most popular neighbor!
Back when we were organizing the Garden Club, we talked about how it could one day become a true community garden where our company folks would weed side-by-side with people who live in the neighborhood and maybe even kids or staff from IPSSchool #14 and the other businesses and organizations near us.
We’ve invested a lot in our little corner of the Holy Cross Neighborhood. We thought it might take a while to get these more personal roots going, though.
Clearly we were wrong. The roots are already there. And you can bet we'll be nurturing them.
We can’t wait to see who stops by next.