This Week on 2nd Betwen Blanchard and Bell

The weekly meeting of People's Belltown Republic this week was pretty mellow and marked by a cameo appearance by Margaret Thatcher.

I started on my own this week, and cleaned the corner of 2nd and Blanchard and in front of the Crocodile before the crew showed up. I found three pizza boxes, which are sold on the street for $5 on the weekends. I also found the typical tall-boy beer cans, but the block was noticeably absent of Jooze cans. I guess the street got sick of Jooze--it must have too many vitamins or something.

I cleaned up the corner of 2nd and Blanchard on my own, and cleaned around two men who were standing on the corner looking to score or deal some crack. I cleaned around them, and one of them ACTUALLY recycled the tall-boy can of the beer he was drinking from a paper bag. When he recycled it felt like a bit of progress or a small victory because often the crack people throw the cans in the bushes. It felt good.

The stormwater gutters on the street had started accumulating trash and cigarette butts again, so we cleaned them out. We only pulled one garbage bag worth of trash from the gutter, and it was a huge improvement over our last gutter clean-out.

Our "trash find of the week" was an empty food container on which was written a message to a homeless person. The author offered the homeless person Indian cuisine and signed the message as Margaret Thatcher. Bloody brilliant, Maggie!

In the gardening department we are batting a big zero. All of our plants died in the record heat, and the soil in the beds is like dust. We now realize that we should have worked on amending and improving the soil of the planting beds we adopted prior to planting. We're planning on doing some sheet mulching this fall to try to regenerate the soil a bit. We plan this on our adopted corner planters, as well as in front of Zoe. Hopefully this winter, the soil will be improved and we will be able to plant root vegetables to break up the soil in the spring.

We're also going to start working on some art. Hopefully soon. Keep your fingers crossed....