Blair Community Garden

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Here are a few photos of SE Portland's Blair Community Garden, near SE 33rd & Stark. It's a fairly small garden, and it's a little unusual in that the city doesn't actually own it, even though it's part of the city's garden program. The land belongs to the assisted living facility next door, and when it changed hands in 2005 the garden went on hiatus for five years. Eventually the local neighborhood association managed to cut a deal with the facility's new corporate owners; among other things, some of the garden plots are now reserved for facility residents, which I suppose is only fair. The garden was revived in late 2010, I suppose just in time to plant bulbs for spring 2011, or anything else that needs to go in the ground early. (I generally don't grow plants from seeds, so I'm a little hazy on planting times for most things.)

When I see mentions of "new corporate owners", for me it conjures up images of community gardens being bulldozed, maybe in favor of a monocrop of Monsanto's new carnivorous franken-tobacco, and neighborhood pets disappearing when they wander too close, and expensive lawyers in expensive suits, and whistleblowers "vanishing", and an uncanny glow at night, followed by desperate aerial spraying, and the National Guard coming in with flamethrowers, and finally a massive coverup with City Hall's full support. Luckily this hasn't happened so far, unless maybe they have a really excellent professional-grade coverup in place.