I can dig it...

OK, Sunday morning. It's on.

1. Coffee from Farleys: check
2. Breakfast burrito from Hazel's Kitchen: check
3. Sunday paper: check
4. Truck full of plants: check
5. Buckets with lids for water on a handcart (because a hose running out of the window across the street is silly): check
6. One each of the following, suspiciously new and clean, from Ace Hardware: shovel, pair of gardening gloves, trowel: check
7. Carefully Photshopped aerial view of the plot (courtesy of Google maps) showing placement of each plant: check

We place the plants where we want them, and right away people with dogs, or local businessfolks, start asking what we're up to and giving encouragement. Nice way to meet the neighbors!

First up is Gary from Brickley Production Services which is right next to the plot. It turns out we could not have planted anything without his help because under 6" of mulch is rocky terrain. He lends us a pickaxe and another shovel, and agrees to let us use his hose for watering later on. Thank you Gary!

Next, Jim and Carrie bicycle up, and it turns out Jim is the one who planted a Tibouchina Urvilleana on the plot a few months back. I had seen the potted plant sitting on the sidewalk on 17th street, and a few days later it had migrated to outside the Bottom of the Hill

Later that week it crawled up the hill to 18th street, where Jim rescued it and planted it carefully, with a stake, on the Pennsylvania Garden plot. That was what pushed me over the edge into planning the garden. Pretty cool, Jim.

We also saw some of our neighbors in our building, and a lady with a cute dog called Emily (sorry, I'm so bad with people names!)

So, we start digging. As I said, 6" of mulch covering rocky, shaley clay. Ugh. Some areas are worse than others - Matt had a rough time getting his agapanthus in at the sidewalk edge, but I had fun putting the ceanothus, hakea and kunzea in in the meantime. But a few hours later we are done.

Final tally:
6 buckets of water
4 hands full of blisters
30 plants planted
Innumerable piles of doog poop removed...