Community Garden

Seattle has a program called the P Patch Program.  There are 88 P Patches around the city of Seattle.  They are basically community gardens, where small scale produce and other plants can be grown.  To be able to farm on a little patch of the P Patches, you have to get onto the P Patch sign up list and also select your choice of location.  Then you wait to be contacted when an available plot opens us.

Some communities around the city have their own community gardens, not apart of the P Patch Program.  In Normandy Park, attached to Marvista Park, is a community garden.  The community garden here has a lottery type of selection opposed to the P Patch Program's waiting list.  

There is also a community garden in Burien called the B Patch, which I want to check out before I leave.  I just like to know what people are growing and maybe get some inspiration for my own little home garden!

***What's growing at the Marvista Community Garden***

Parks and Recreations

Besides walking down to the Marina, there are a lot of beautiful houses in the Des Moines and Normandy Park neighborhoods that I love to walk by.  It's been lovely having the option to take a trial here and there.  On one of our walks, we went out to the Marvista Park to check out the community garden and also just walk the park.

This is a really dog-friendly park.  In the mornings, we often saw dogs being walked through the park.  There is also a dog poo bag to pick up poo if you forgot your own bag.  It's really such a considerate thing for a city park to have!

***Let's check out the park!***

At one of the corners of the park, nearer to the Normandy Park Swim Club, is a rose garden.  I'm not sure if it is a community rose garden, but it has little plots of different kinds of roses.  When we went to check it out, there were only a few roses in bloom.  A lot of the roses seemed to have been picked earlier in the summer.

Near the parking lot is also a public restroom, which looks pretty cool with every side covered in a mural.

At the opposite end of the park, in another corner is a really awesome children's play area.  It looks only a few years old and has always been empty when we've been there in the mornings.  It's caged off for safety and also keeping…maybe…dogs out?  But, there are benches to rest and wait on…and there is a padded ground surrounding the play gyms.

The parks out here in the suburbs aren't as populated as some of the ones down in the city, where I often see people sunning themselves in the summer months (Cal Anderson Park, Lincoln Park, Seattle Center's lawns or Volunteer Park!), but it is quite refreshing to have the feeling of solitude.  It's really quite a nice change to have so FEW people around opposed to HK's crowded streets!