Guerrilla Garden on Devonshire Ave.

This is a story I've been watching develop for a while.  If you follow my Lexington's Bike Pathways blog, then you know that I am a fan of using a short-cut from Devonshire Ave to Red Mile Rd.  Devonshire Ave is a short street, 2 blocks long.  One block carries a fair amount of traffic, but the other is barely used at all.  Along this barely used portion of the street used to be a dump for someone's beer bottles and cans, each bottle and each can wrapped in it's own brown paper sack.

Here's the view down the less traveled portion of Devonshire Ave.

One day, the bottles and cans disappeared.  In their place, someone had put a pile of dirt.  Turns out that the pile of dirt was a garden bed, and now there is food growing where trash once was.  Currently, the garden contains lettuce, collards, green beans, spinach, broccoli, green peppers, and tomatoes.

I've chanced across the gardener of this plot, and he told me the food is there for anyone who wants to take it.  He also provided some tips for potential harvesters: (1) It's best to pick lettuce leaves from the outside of the plant, leaving some in the middle, so that the plant can keep growing; but if you see that the lettuce is going to seed, just take the whole dang plant, it's time is done; (2) Once the beans start growing, they need to be picked frequently, so the plant keeps producing.

I think this is a great idea.  Just today my wife and I picked some collards for our dinner.  They were GOOD!