Hopewell Garden Audio Story - Part Four

September is a poignant time in any garden. The season is changing, it's the harvest, and everything is gradually slowing down. In this time of natural transition, Rebecca Singh led a guided, described walk for members of Toronto's Blind and Visually Impaired community. And, Christine returned to once again talk with the gardeners about what they're up to, and to hear about life in the garden. From the look and feel of a New England Aster to parties in and out of the garden, this episode has a little bit of everything!

Voices you'll hear in this episode, in order are: Rebecca Singh, Christine Malec, Charlie Bush, John McMillan, Charity Landon, Kimberley Gibbons, Kim's feisty little hound.

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The Description Rich Story Hour and The Hopewell Garden Audio Story are created by Christine Malec, Rebecca Singh and Katherine Sanders. They are a trio of artists who came together for the purpose of creating audio experiences of the natural world from a Blind-led perspective.

These stories are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Foundation.

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Transcript

So we're walking uphill here. On both sides there's green grass and in the distance, about 15 meters or so, there are some pine trees. I think they're pine trees. They have long needles. It's a beautiful day. Blue sky, fluffy clouds, kind of cotton ball like clouds.

September is a poignant time of year for gardeners. The season is changing, it's getting cooler. There's less light. The time of verdant growth is passed. Maybe there's a bit less to do in the garden, and there's definitely the feeling of a cyclical ending, and yet it's harvest to time. Some plants are still offering food, some plants are still flowering and attracting pollinators. In a community garden like Hopewell, people are still gathering to share the work and the produce. In this time of undeniably comforting change. Two things happened for the described Toronto collective. I visited the garden to once again talk with the gardeners and find out what they're up to at harvest season. And audio describer Rebecca Singh led a guided described walk through Walter Saunders Memorial Park, home of the Hopewell Community Garden

On the southern side. So towards your left is the pollinator garden, and where I am basically it's a Y intersection. So if you were to go towards your left, you'd be going between the grass and the street and the grass in the street would be on one side of you, and on the other side would be the pollinator garden. And if you go on the right hand, you'd be walking between the pollinator garden and the community garden. The community garden has a fence around it and it has raised raised beds, raised vegetable beds in it, and it has a metal lake link fence, so you can feel that as you cross in the pollinator garden, which is full of all different kinds of flowers and plants, many of them at my shoulder height, I'm five 10 or even taller. There are a couple of paths that go through it.

If you're blind and navigating your way through the city, an urban park is most likely to be a blank spot on your mental map, which you're primarily concerned to get past unless you take some trouble to learn what's there. It's easy to be unaware of the infrastructure and just the stuff that happens in a park. That's why the idea of a guided described walk through the park was so appealing, not only to me but to the dozen or so members of Toronto's blind and low vision community who joined us on a sunny day. The fall equinox, in fact, for a stroll through the park and the gardens

And there's many, many plants, there's little signs under at the bottom of each plant. There's so much care put into this garden here that lists what type of plants they are. So we can also kind of give you that information as well where I am right now. So this is a wedge shaped garden. It is here about maybe four meters wide, and then it fans out to about maybe eight meters wide about let's say 20 meters back. And there's two paths that go through it.

If you're sighted. Some of Rebecca's description may seem surprisingly granular. If you're not, it may well be a satisfying experience of filling in what are usually just gaps.

And yes, I wanted to also just point out, so some of the features surrounding this little garden. So in the distance we're going to get closer to it, but further, a little bit further north is a hydro pole, and in fact, this entire strip of land, and I'll talk more about it later, is underneath the hydro wires, which is kind of a Toronto thing. There are a lot of parks underneath hydro wires, I think. I don't know why it has something to do with city planning. But yeah, so they're hydro wires, and then behind the garden is like a condo. It is a condo building now, but it was once a factory, so it's a three floor building with windows and it's gray in color and it has a little blue tile inlet.

When I came back to the garden to once again speak with some of the gardeners, I came with a few questions I asked everyone. The answers I got were a fantastic representation of the fact that everyone's got a different perspective on successes and challenges, but still the common thread is the value each places on the community that's built up around the garden. The first thing I wanted to know is what's going on in the garden right now?

Early September, we're losing light now gets darker earlier, and this September it's been chill than I feel I remember past Septembers. So a lot of our plantings are sort of winding down now. We're cleaning up plants as they die off and getting ready for, I suppose what we're hoping are over winter plantings so that we're prepared in the spring. It's sort of the a little early this year I guess, but we're in the twilight of the garden, I guess. Harvesting, we're still harvesting. We've got a few tomatoes left there just starting to turn red. So we're hoping that if we still get some nice warm days and nice sunny days, we'll still have some tomatoes. Our collard greens are still growing like crazy. We've got lots of beans still. So I'm optimistic that harvest is going to continue for another few weeks at least.

Well, it is starting to wind down partly because the sun is going down, and so as a result we have less light available for some vegetables and stuff. But that said, we've got some spinach actually that we planted back in August, which is coming up now, and we'll probably keep going until likely into October or November even because it actually doesn't like heat. So spinach and lettuce and things like that tend to cooler temperatures. Otherwise they bolt and they just go directly to seed. So actually it's a good time for that sort of stuff. But other things are starting to wane and we start to clear out things that have, either they're just dying out or they have some kind of a fungus, or they may have some flea beetles or some other kind of insect that's devastated them. So that's that. And then the flowers mostly have faded by now, and we will either deadhead them or just leave them and let them go to seed and drop seeds. I guess for, we have a little few flowers, but mostly it's vegetable.

So as plants sort of stop yielding and die off, we'll pull those out. And generally every year in October, what we'll do is we'll clear out some beds and we'll plant our garlic. The garlic gets planted in the fall, and we'll protect the beds with a layer of straw over top to protect the dirt a little bit from the harsh elements. And I think that this year we'll probably have some kale that we'll leave in over the winter. We'll see how the collared greens stew over the winter maybe. But typically it's clearing out the beds, planting the garlic. We like our garlic, so we'd plant several beds worth of garlic and just generally down making sure that the beds are nice and clear. For spring planting, I'll talk to the gardeners as well. Sometimes in the fall we'll do a soil amendment, we'll place our fertilizer and get the soil ready. Sometimes we do that in early spring as well, so we'll need to discuss as a group and a committee to figure out whether we want to do it in the fall or the spring.

Well, we'll plant garlic early and let it over winter, and then we put straw on top of it. The straw itself will sometimes germinate in wheat or oats or something like that, which sometimes happens, and then we just sort of chop that back in the spring. But that's the main thing. And mostly it'll just be cleaning out the things that won't over winter, something the herbs will all over winter, so you don't have to worry about that. So it's mostly just taking out the things that are more susceptible to cold as it gets colder and darker, because there's still some things that actually will grow into November. As I said, carrots will grow into November. Some of the beans will actually be plant late, and sometimes we'll get beans out of it. Spinach, we'll get out of it probably into October, November.

Right now what we're thinking about, we're not really thinking quite so much about what to plant, but because we like to seek the input of the various gardeners to see where their interest lies though, to be frank, it doesn't evolve that much because everybody loves tomatoes and basil and cucumbers and eggplants. But every year we try to integrate some new ideas. What we were discussing this evening was plans for the garden. We had made a new sort of cucumber trellis, a trellis for growing cucumber vines this season, and we're planning to do another one for next year. And we were also already discussing a composting and some manure, starting to prepare the soil for next spring. We do multiple plantings. First we have what we call cool weather planting in the early spring, so lettuce peas, spinach, things like that. And then once all the danger of frost is over in late May, then we plant the tomatoes and peppers and basil, all the kind of warm weather loving plants, that's sort of Miediterranean type plants. But then now this time of year, then now it's a bit cooler. We can start replanting some of the things that prefer the cold weather and they'll carry on right through into October. We're often still harvesting in November

For next year. I think we're actively discussing with people who might want to take on leadership roles, become more active on the steering committee or the site committee, or become a day team lead. And that's just an ongoing process. We will talk about it as often as we can. It isn't easy to get people who have enough time and interest in doing the infrastructure kind of work for the garden. Most people want to come and garden and be in the garden, but that's definitely top of mind for me as one of the people on the steering committee of trying to make sure that we replenish the group and that new ideas are welcome and that we can kind of see what else could we do or how just to do what we're doing in a way that's meaningful and comfortable for people without becoming too much.

Okay, so what we have here, it's a common Toronto plant. We have some golden rod, so it is, would folks like to touch these plants? I'm happy to. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I think what the best thing to do is actually if you move forward, you're going to feel that the terrain changes to sort of more soil. And there you go. So that's the golden rod. Would you like to feel it too? Okay. So yeah, you can just move forward. Oh yeah. And another bit more forward. So the golden rod, would you folks like to Hi, good. Hi, you're good. Okay, great. And how about you? Would you like to touch the golden rod? Okay, so you can, you're going to feel that the terrain changes. Yeah, just straight in front of you. Yeah, there we go. So I don't see any bees currently in the golden rod, although they are very attracted to it, the whole thing. The flower for this yellow, yes. Yeah. So the golden rod basically has flowers that are little fuzzy tails, and they're all golden yellowish in color. And then they have a sort of a woody stock, and it's kind of bushy. And then the pedals are oval pointed ovals, and it grows. This is a typical height for a golden rod, and it's kind of medium in height compared. So this one goes up to my chest level, and it's sort of medium in height compared to the other plants and flowers in the garden. When the golden rods have finished flowering, their flowers turn white, so the ones on the left hand side are white and they might feel a little bit crispier.

Then I asked, what are the successes stories in terms of harvesting,

I guess the collard greens, I feel like every week I come out here and I hack back the collared greens and I bring back an entire, it seems like an entire bushel back home, and I cook them down. I have collared greens for dinner with my husband, and then the next week I come here and it feels like they all grew back just week after week. So many collared greens, very surprised with the yield from them this year. So every year I feel like we have some things that grow better than others, and it sort of varies. And in the past years, our cucumber yield hasn't been that fantastic, but this year it was incredible. So both sides of the cucumber trellis, I guess, are dueling cucumbers performed really well. We got tons of cucumbers off of both of 'em. I don't think I'd be able to kind of pick a winner out of the two.

One of them was a smaller pickling cucumber, and we got way more number of those ones. And the other cucumber was a more traditional cucumber, and we got several enormous cucumbers out of it. So resounding success, we're talking about building a second cucumber trellis for next year so that we could have even more cucumbers. It did way better than I thought it would, honestly. Dennis built it. He did a great job. And as mentioned, we've already demanded Dennis built us a new one next year, so we're going to have two. I harvested a few of our beets and I roasted them up and I had them with a pasta with goat cheese, and I think that was my favorite harvest this year. A couple of nicely roasted beets. The okra did really well, and it still continues to do really well. I'm looking across at it right now, and there's a bunch of pots still growing. We had a pretty significant harvest of the okra last week. So yeah, it was very popular. I'm glad we ended up planting it. We were late on the okra, so I wasn't sure how well it would do. But yeah, it's been growing consistently all season. So eggplants are another thing that's continuing to grow right now. Lots of little kind of mini eggplant to share. I've made a couple of them into curries, and they're very tasty. This year

We had a really good year with cucumbers, weirdly, because in the past we've planted cucumbers and they just get attacked by, I think they're called flea beetles that just absolutely devastate all of the leaves and all the flowers, and we barely get anything out of it. It's just pockmarked with little holes. But this year, surprisingly, we had a really good haul. Dennis, one of the lead gardeners here manufactured a trellis of sorts. We had big ideas of doing some sort of a really long, a 12 foot long trellis thing, but that didn't work out. So we produced this, well, didn't Dennis did this very nice little trellis that the cucumbers all climbed over, and that worked really well. So that was exciting.

The tomatoes are coming on full blast. That's probably been the biggest success in the garden this year. Sometimes different plants do better in one year or another, and this year has definitely been a tomato year, so that's great. And they're all kinds of greens, especially the collared greens are, we have enough to feed an army still. One of my favorite things is seeing the okra plants grow. Until I joined this community garden, I had never seen okra plants grow. I had no idea how okra grows. And the plants have done really well this year, and they're tall, they're about four feet tall, and they've got all kinds of little okras, baby okras growing on there. So for me, that's a success

For me. It's like always kale because I love kale and you have a dinosaur kale that it's just really robust and it's great in your smoothies, and I really like it. This year I was eating the chard more than ever, and so it's interesting. It's kind of a tough, so I am not sure if I love it, but that was a success. And then there's so many beans. Even tonight there's still beans that are harvesting. And the tomatoes this year I feel like the tomatoes stayed pretty healthy. Some years we've had pests and we've had the different weather that affects the tomatoes, but this year they're pretty great. So overall, everything is good. One thing that consistently is good is we have a small patch of herbs, and they just come back every year. So it's nice. Sometimes I pop by when it's not my night of the garden just to grab some, put them in cooking. So it's nice to have that place.

So these flowers here, this is another bush and where's probably New England ass? There we go. It's a beautiful purple flower. You can reach forward if you like. It's got delicate little petals. They're small. Yeah, there we go. And some of them are already dried and kind of hard, and you can feel the seeds. They have a circle, sort of like a wheel of oval, tiny purple pedals, and they have a yellow center which turns brown after it's gotten hard. And that's where the seeds are there. In terms of the pollinators that are visiting here, and Katie, if you want to contribute or Chris please, I am the least scientific of the group. There's many types of bees and there are about 700 different species, Chris, is that right?

Any crops or ideas that didn't go so well?

A little bit of disappointment with our basil that got planted. We did a bunch of Italian and Thai basil, and I think that the seeds we got for the Italian basil must have been off. I am not sure, but almost none of it grew. We got tons of Thai basil, so I ended up having to go to the store and buy some Italian basil to plant for the garden instead, because everybody loves the basil, so we had to get it in there somehow.

We struggle every year because some plants don't do very well in the hot sun or hot temperatures. And as you know, Toronto does not have much of a spring. It seems to be cold in May and then suddenly very hot. And there's not a lot of in-between time. And so we always plant lettuce and radishes and things that like cooler weather early in the spring, but they just barely get up and get going when suddenly it's 30 degrees and humid out and those kind of plants are not very happy and they bolt, so they just suddenly grow tall and bitter and go to seed. So that's not exactly a failure on our part, but it's something that we're still coming to grips with to figure out how to address that.

The ground cover here, the ground cover in the first place was just mostly soil. Maybe they're putting new seed, but the ground cover here is actually strawberries. It's fully covered, so there's little grass and then you can feel down if you want to. There's some plants that have wilted that have more stringy fronds,

And these are the stringy fronds. And then there's strawberries, and the swep pea actually live in the ground, so they're not going to like a hive, but they're actually living in the ground. Another just the one last plant that I wanted to point out was it's behind this one, the purple one with the purple flowers, sumac. It's called the sumac, and it has these flowers that feel like bunches of raspberries or berries, and maybe I'm going to have to guide people's hands so you can feel it's kind of soft inside. Does it have a cent? I think it does have a cent.

And then of course, I was eager to catch up with that jewel of the space, the pollinator garden,

And then the pollinator garden. It's overgrown, but it's doing okay, and it's been very happy. It's extraordinarily colorful right now. There's golden rod, there's I'm colorblind, so I shouldn't be doing this, but there are colors and I will allow someone who is better at that than I to comment. But it's been great. There's lots of actually fewer butterflies than we've seen before, but lots of bees and lots of birds and lots of rabbits.

So the pollinator garden, the way it's set up is different plants will flower at different times. So in June, the pollinator garden look very different to what it does now just because of the different balloons that are happening. So it's still very active. As we're sitting here chatting, I can look out and I see just the bees buzzing around all the flowers. It is very visible to see how well it's working, which is very encouraging. So right now we've got, it's still blooming furiously in the fall, or I guess it's not quite fall yet. September still blooming furiously and it'll start to wind down kind of come October as well. And we let it be because throughout the winter, the bees and the pollinators will nest inside the empty stalks and everything. So we let the pollinator kind of die off. Don't touch it, don't prune it, and let the bees and winter insects move in for the winter.

Well, it feels like fall. So things are starting to change color a little bit. Some of the plants are dying and thinning, but there's still some bright purple color. There's a yellow kind of colors and there's white colors. So thinking back to where we were two months ago where they were really full and bright, everything is a bit subdued right now, but it's still nice. It's still pleasant. And one thing I've learned in the last couple of years is that we should actually leave more of the plants as we head into the fall and winter because there's still lots of insects and birds and bees that are using those plants. So I guess that's something for us to do is to let them be and let them be places for the bees in particular to inhabit as the cold weather comes.

And on our right hand side, we've just passed the pollinator garden and now the garden itself, the vegetable garden, and we're going to stand along this fence. So the fence is actually, we're going to feel it, and I'm at the end of it now, so you can stop and you can feel the fence is just on your,

So what's on our right hand side now is the vegetable garden. So there's approximately 12 raised beds. Each of them are numbered, and each of the gardeners will know what kind of fruits and vegetable are in each number. There's a couple that are actually raised so that folks in wheelchairs can garden as well, so their chair can scoot underneath it. And there's some kale, I believe that's growing. I see some chrysanthemums, some tomatoes that are still green. So I'm just going to actually start walking down the trail and you can begin to follow me. So it's all paved. And the trail itself is I would say about five meters wide.

Oh, that is an electrical. Yes. Your animals might be drawn to the electrical, what is it called? Tower, which is on the right hand side, and on the left hand side are homes. The grass slopes downward on the left hand side and goes towards fences, which are people's backyards. And on the other side of the fences, you can actually see, because we're at the same level of their second story homes or windows. So these are brick homes, not huge mansions or anything like that, but they're basically separated by these high fences. And then on your right hand side there is the middle of the park, which has some tall trees in it. It has some evergreen trees. There's a bench, sort of where I am right now if anyone needs to sit down.

My first round of interviews referred to pests and pest control. I was curious about how that went as the growing season progressed.

I don't even want to talk about the squirrels right now. I mean, they were on point this year. They always are. Hi, I didn't find the aphids were too bad, but maybe it was because other groups did such a good job at eliminating them. I feel like my group only had to pick off aphids a few times, but oh man, the squirrels, it's so disheartening. You come in and you'll get a tomato that's been picked off. It looks beautiful with the exception that it's been, the quarter of it has been munched away by a squirrel, and they just leave the rest behind. So it's a continuing battle.

One of my particular efforts or passions is the Swiss chard because early in the year we get these pernicious little white flies that will lay strips of eggs. They're like tiny little, maybe two or three millimeter lines of white eggs that they lay every night. And then those eggs subsequently hatch, and then those little beasties go and basically devour the plants. And so I've become obsessed with going in the early part of the year and scraping off each leaf to get these bloody white little eggs off every night. So I'm always out there going leaf by leaf by leaf, because if you get them early enough, then the plant will have enough energy to be able to actually grow. Whereas if you don't, they're just a hollow, they suck away all the juice from it, and you may as well not bother planting it. Well, this year we had great success this year. The Swiss chard was amazing this year for me. Well, mold fungus. Fungus is always a,

You never really know where it comes from with bugs. You can sort of have an idea. In the case of the Swiss char, I know that I call 'em barcode beetles, but because they look like little white barcodes on the underside of leaves, and so those, I can scrape them off and you can actually see the plant respond. But with fungus, really, you don't know whether it's going to show up or not. And it's question of whether it's wet enough for it, whether it's hot enough for it, whether it's windy enough or not windy enough. So fungus you never really know. And so you're always trying to come up with some kind of concoction to deal with it when you see it, because it will just go through an entire series of plants and then the leaves go, and after that you may as well just choke them out. No good anymore. But in terms of wildlife, well, no. The squirrels did their shopping in the tomato garden, and they're very much of the opinion of any try before you buy. So they will take a massive hunk out of a tomato and then kind of go, it's not really ripe for me. No, I'm going to leave it. So we have a lot of squirrel damage from time to time, from very discerning gastropods with long tails.

But in terms of, I haven't seen a lot of mice, I haven't seen a lot of rats this year in this garden. They're around, but not here necessarily. Coyotes always are around, but they're always in the middle of the night. You sometimes see them, mostly you don't, and they're usually after the rabbits that are zipping around all over through the grass. But in terms of the actual garden itself, nothing's really been particularly nasty to have to deal with. Thankfully,

I haven't really been dealing with any pests this summer. Maybe some other people are doing a better job, and I'm not even seeing them. But my experience is that in past years, we often had something that was planting eggs on the back of all our spinach and kale, but that didn't seem to, and then they would hatch, the eggs would hatch and they would eat holes, so all of our greens or green leaves would have holes in them. But that wasn't really the case this year. And maybe because we did not grow potatoes this year, we did not have any potato bugs. So in summary, my experience was we had very few pests this year.

Coming up on your left hand side is going to be a cul-de-sac. So there's sort of the middle point of the park, and it's another entry point for where people can enter on the north end. You'll feel the cool shade

Now

On both sides of you as you pass through some, these are lower trees. And then just past those lower trees, there's a sign here which is all graffitied up that says Salinas Court Station. And so this used to be the Salinas Court station. I'm just waiting for folks to catch up. I can't read it. Graffiti all over it, but it just commemorates the station that this was when this was once a rail path. There's a large stone that is flat at the top that I would say six people could probably sit on, and you'd be kind of at the highest point, be able to see all over the park. There's some trees planted up there as well. And we're coming up now to another big electrical pole or it tower. It says danger, 110,000 volts. There's a couple of big older trees. There's a garbage can recycling little station here. Anyone has something they need to throw out.

In previous conversations, I was so struck by the kinds of interactions gardeners had with the public, just random people passing by. So I wanted to ask for any highlights from their gardening season.

We had one visitor to the garden, oh, her name, Aisha. And she was a new Canadian, new to the community and had just been walking around and saw the garden was interested and just happened to be walking past while we were active one evening. And she asked to come into the garden. She asked to see what we did, seemed interested in it. And it was just really, I found it was really, I guess, heartwarming interaction. Just someone new to Canada, new to this neighborhood, interested in the garden, and interested enough to kind of, I don't know, be I guess assertive enough to just go up to some random strangers and just start asking them about something that you're interested in. So I guess it's just one of the things that I think this community garden does well just bring together people from all sorts of backgrounds in this community under a general interest of wanting to plant things. Just before you came here today, one of my neighbors came by with his daughter and started asking, Hey, I think next year she might be old enough. Is there kids involved? Can we join? So I don't know, maybe I might've encouraged a new garden recruit by just chatting less than a half hour ago. So still gardening lots of interest. It's great to see

This evening, for instance, you see a lot more kids, even though in the summertime you'd think that'd be when you'd see more kids going by. But no, it's actually you see them once they've gone back to school for some reason, we see them more. And so I just had two kids came by tonight who were asking if, is this a tomato? And I said, yeah, this is a tomato plant. There's a whole bunch of tomato plants. So they start out small. I said, yeah, yeah, they're basically a seed. And then I picked up a weed and said, so they start like that, and then gradually they get this heavy stalks and these fruit hanging off them. So I gave them each a tomato, a little tomato that was red dish. It's not quite right, but it's getting there. And I said, put that in your window, a sunny window for three or four days, and it'll change color, and then you can eat it now, but it'll be better if you wait for a couple of days. Why does it do that? And I said, well, and so I made up something very quickly.

I said, well, the sun's rays take the sugars that are inside the tomato and amplify their sweetness and change them into sugar. And so as a result, they change color and then they also taste better. So you'll see that as they ripen, but they're not on a plant. I said, no, no, it'll still ripen on your window. So believe. So. I was very proud of myself for being able to summon that kind of wisdom on the fly and make up something that sounded credible. So that's the beauty of this particular garden is that you meet people who want to tell you their story, or in the case of the kids identifying something that they may have eaten but had no idea where it came from. And then occasionally, because directly next to this gardener, there's sort of a ring of metal benches that were left there back when this was a bocce court.

And so would have, people would come and watch people playing bocce. Well, the city never took them out. When we put in this garden or the city put in this garden, they didn't take the benches away. So you have lots and lots of people who just come and sit on the benches. Now, some of them are engaged in somewhat illicit activities. There's a lot of dope smoking, there's a lot of drinking. And so occasionally you have long conversations with people who are into their sixth beer, but they still have lots to say about the garden, this and that. And so you do engage with, not just with gardeners, but also with lots of other people who just enjoy the company of other people within the park. And I'm one of the few people who actually talk to them because I get a kick out of, and often I find people will sit at this actual table and be in sort of rolling joints and having a sort of a coffee clutch among their chums. So I used to get cranky about that and go, guys, this is a private garden. And then I said, nah, if they're not ruining anything, then go ahead, fill your boots, smoke your weed, have a great evening, and make sure you clean up after yourselves when you go.

We're about to hit the little Jamaica exercise area. Oh, nice. And so now you'll feel we're going downhill just a little bit. There's a big condo that is on your left hand side, and that is where many of the gardeners actually live. So there's a flat of grass and then a fence, and then they're back parking lot. And then there is a four floor converted factory, which is a condo building now. And so you may smell some wood chips when you are near me here. Okay, so this is the exercise area. So if you'd like, now, you may not have time, but I'll just say there is an exercise area here. It is for adults more than children, and there's wood chips and there's different devices, basically posts with metal bars where you could practice. One is sort of like parallel bars. You could do pull-ups or pushups. There is a climbing gym for you would have in a playground for kids, but this is adult size. And there's a couple of different metal steps if you wanted to do step up, for example. Those are more towards the west side.

And of course, the gardeners have a social life together around and outside the garden that's as lush as the eggplant plants. So I wanted to hear some highlights from that too.

We definitely, as a group of gardeners, often plan get togethers. We have kind of a tradition that at the end of the summer, we have a potluck party for all the gardeners. We don't have it in the garden. We have it at one of the condo buildings nearby, but it's like a potluck and everybody comes. The idea started out as make something out of the produce from the garden, but there's not really enough produce in the garden for everyone to produce a dish to feed 30 or 40 people in one evening. But it just turned into kind of a barbecue and potluck and all the gardeners come and bring their families. And even some people who are not even members of the garden, but our neighbors, there's no reason they can't just join in as well. So that's a lot of fun. We always do that. And soon we'll be starting to plan our little Halloween party. Every year we have a Halloween party, we carve pumpkins and put them on display in the garden.

It just contributes to the community feel. There is something that people can make a point of walking by to see all the collection of Jack-O-lanterns, and we give out candy and non candy treats for the trick or treaters, young fffand old, whoever comes by. We just have a chit chat with them. It's a lot of fun. So I enjoy that they're kind of formal and informal or just happenstance. So for example, last week, one of the gardeners who, she's very generous with her time and her cooking, she sent us a little message. We were here on Wednesday evening, and shfe sent us a little note asking, does anybody want to try my dill pickles and my pickled eggplant? Oh, yeah, sure. So she lives a few blocks away. It was not her evening to be in the garden, but she came over and she had a kind of container of eggplant and pickles that she had made. So we just sat and had a chat and, well, I need to go on record to say that her pickles and pickled eggplant were delicious, but it was so much more than that. It was her kindness in bringing them over. And then the time that we were able to spend together chatting with her,

Kim and Dennis have been doing a great job with inviting the gardeners over to their place on Roselawn and a couple of rooftop parties with different foods made for potlucks and stuff like that. I know that upcoming, we normally do a pumpkin carving in October. And on Halloween night we also come out to the garden light, all the pumpkins up. And then because I live in a condo building, we don't get trick or treaters, but out here by the garden, there's lots of kids walking by. So I like handing out candy to the kids as they come by, and that's always a fun night. So looking forward to that event.

As we get to the end of the gardening season, we also plan for Halloween. And so in the past years, we've had some kind of pumpkin carving event where we just get together the weekend before Halloween and people apple cider and have some snacks, and then just carve pumpkins together. And on Halloween night, we come together in the garden and people bring the pumpkins, and it's a little bit of the kickoff point for people that are going to go out trick or treating. But it's also a place where just kids can come and get some treats, and the gardeners themselves, most of whom are not children, stand here together and give out things. So it's just fun. It's a nice way to kind of wrap up the season, and I always look forward to it.

On our left hand side, we're still going to have the back of the condo that pretty much runs the whole length of the rest of the park. And then on our right hand side, flat of grass, somebody has left there. There's actually a tricycle. There's a parent and a kid playing with a soccer ball. You'll feel some shade from some trees. There's a small grove of trees. There's a big bump with about eight or nine tall trees on it, another high point. And so now we're going to be veering slightly towards our right. So we're leaving the K BeltLine trail, and we're heading towards the playground.

The one thing that I remember was the eclipse. There was the solar eclipse, which I believe was earlier this year. And so many people were excited about this particular celestial phenomenon. And I spent it sitting at this table with three people, and I can't remember when that was. I want to say March, maybe. I can't remember now. But it was just, we were all wanting to participate in it. And so we chose to come here because this was communal. In a weird way, it's almost metaphorical for community in that even though there was nothing growing here, the garden itself wasn't really operating, but it was a place that people wanted to come to. So everybody, not everybody, a group of people kind of migrated towards this space in order to watch this collective celestial phenomenon, which I thought was kind of an interesting comment on what this as a piece of community infrastructure means.

And so we sat here and I went inside to my place. I lived very close, and so I made tea and I brought out mugs of tea. And so we sat here, it was quite cold, and watched the sky darken and listen to the birds stop crowing or stop chirping, and everything just kind of became a little bit still. And then it all proceeded on. Wasn't fully black as it was in other parts of the world, but that was our experience of it. And it was in this spot. And that's the one thing that I remember about the garden area this year was this is where I came to witness, I won't say watch, but witness the solar eclipse with three or four other people, which I thought was kind of cool.

Described Toronto as a collective of storytellers, including audio Describer Rebecca Singh, event producer Katherine Sanders and myself, accessibility consultant Christine Malec. We're grateful to the folk at the Hopewell Community Garden for their participation in making this project come together. The Hopewell Garden Audio Project is an arts in the park initiative. We're grateful for the support of the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Toronto Arts Council.