chicago participated in International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day 2010!
Since we do our digs at night, I planned the dig for Friday, April 30th so that first thing saturday morning would be sunflowers. I scouted out a site earlier in the week and decided on the intersection of Chicago & State. It's not exactly an under-represented part of the city, but I wanted it to be in a highly visible place and it's less than a block away from a really great nonprofit, Access Living. And as you can see f
rom the pictures, the place could use a little extra love.
One predicament: Sunflowers are not really sprouting this time of year. Did not think of this in advance. INSTEAD I bought a bunch of flowers that LOOKED like sunflowers (marigolds) and bought some fake sunflowers to put in the ground. Also: sunflower seeds.
On Friday I had definitely overbooked myself. I had to get up at 5:00am to teach yoga. Then I taught t
wo more classes and assisted in a 2-hour inversion workshop. AFTER ALL OF THAT I went down to the spot to see who was going to show up. A really great mix of people showed up: John, who heard about Guerrilla Gardening at the Food and Farm Expo, my boyfriend Stephen and a few of his friends Grace and Bryce. Old timer and good friend Pam came out, too! She brought the most beautiful Marigolds to plant!
There was a looking hurricane coming the entire night and so we were extra efficient. Lots of people stopped us to ask what we were doing-- this was definitely the most visible spot to date. It turned out beautiful and we literally took the last group shot about 10 seconds before a downpour.
overall: great time, good peeps and some serious beautification