Day two:

Jenny's take on Day Two:

Much harder than day one. All the "hey aren't we awesome" and "look, we're here at last!" thoughts were used up yesterday. Now we just had a lot of hard tedious work to do, pulling stubborn grass out of flower beds (Team Garden), and struggling with cordless tools that kept going dead (Team Pergola.)   It wasn't quite as hot as yesterday, and we had some new recruits who weren't tired at all, but even so Team Pergola worked til 5:30 and still didn't finish.   Now Asa has gone back to Pittsburgh, leaving TP to carry on without him. Luckily the TP members seem to know exactly how Asa intends those little strips of wood to attach from the six foot high beam to the ten foot high beam, and to have the skills to do it.

Our unsung hero of the day was Stephanie. "Hey Stephanie, we need a 10 foot ladder right away,"  ... "Hey Stephanie can you bring a whole bunch of rakes and shovels?" "Hey stephanie, you are delivering a gaggle of little children tomorrow to plant the flowers, right?"  "Sorry Stephanie we can't pack food today because we decided we had something else to do - you don't mind, do you?" 

Stephanie kept her smile all day, brought us ladders and rakes, made phone calls about children and food, and even came to help weed at 4:00 when a sensible woman might have chosen to stay in the airc-onditioned office and do something like check her email. 

Highlight of the day was definitely lunch at Avalon International Bread. It's in the old Willis Gallery, near Cass, where my mom showed her paintings back in the 1970's. (Called "Detroit's First Alternative Art Space" in one reference I found.)  Jackie Victor said when she got there it was no more than a cave, but I remember it as a very vibrant hub of the Detroit art scene.

In any case, now it's the hub of a whole new and wonderful scene - still vibrant, attractive and with the added benefit of being very yummy.

Tomorrow: planting 100 trays of flowers, painting a fence and bench, and figuring out whose tools are whose so we can get everything back to its rightful owner.
--Jenny