I have been wanting to do....

...this for years, and it finally got done, even though I did not actually have anything to do with completing the project. Planting a proliferation of assorted wildflower seeds in a neglected space.  For brightening up lives, creating smiles of on the faces of anonymous passers-by.

I live near the intersection of two streets that have a high volume of traffic each day, especially during the school year. Busses, day care vans, carpools, plus commuters from hundreds of houses in the neighborhood coming and going at this chaotic place where one street dead-ends into another.

There is a small vacant lot on the one unoccupied corner of the three way intersection. Not really an eyesore as some empty spaces can become, but also not a plot of land put to good use.With a huge concrete utility pole and four guy wires to stabilize the pole. So not much use for anything construction-wise. Though there seem to be lots of people who use it for temporary parking, pulling over for phone conversations, or to wait for something/someone/unknown reasons. Possibly having lunch to throw out bags, cups, wrappers. As well as cigarette butts and beer cans/bottles.

I had thought I might purchase this half-a-lot from the owner and construct a little pocket garden, something small, but with fencing or some sort of barricade to keep people from driving over or parking on growing plants. I even went to the government center at one point to get information on the property owner. But never pursued the plan to ask him if he would sell me that strip of land for $1. It's so narrow, it's almost useless for any building purpose, but the length of the lot we live on, and I would be responsible for property taxes. Plus doing the planting and maintaining of the little proposed garden spot.

Yesterday my 'yard crew' did some tillering up on the corner, and planted some wildflower seeds. I hooked all my garden hoses together to have enough length to drag up and water well. They added some random fertilizer I found (rose food - but much better than nothing on that dry, sandy/clay hard-packed, un-nutritious soil) and added assorted seeds. I had a small can of 'wild flower mix', as well as numerous free packets of assorted flowers: forget me not, marigolds, phillipine lily, radio-active cosmos that grew ten feet tall, butterfly weed, misc. unnamed and unknown. Some were really old, and I know that germination rate will be low for ancient seeds, but even if ten percent will take root and bloom, I will consider that 100% success.

I mixed them all together and turned them loose: there they went. I hope they threw them up in the air like confetti. And I would be amused to see them sprouting in someone's hair like something in a cartoon.  I walked up there and watered again late in the afternoon, and will do it this morning. Hope to have a good crop and lots of surprises.