Oh, my sweet blog, I’ve neglected you again! I have a really good excuse this time, I promise, for I was in the midst of house renting hell. My week was nothing but headaches, leases, and legal jargon.
It all worked out in the end though. Come this summer Philly Lush’s base will move from the “deep south” (as I’ve heard this area called) to…erm…the slightly less “deep” South Philly.
Anyway.
A loooong while ago Team Philly Lush participated in the Philly Spring Cleanup. This is that story.
I woke up at 8 a.m. to a text message telling me that two more people had dropped out of Team Philly Lush. We had now gone from a 7 member team to 2. This is clearly not a team to walk into Morder with, let alone a team to help plant trees with. Fortunately for the environment the only person to not abandon me was already in his car driving towards me on 95, so I sucked it up and crawled out of bed.
John and I worked at the Southern High School location. We picked this because it seemed to have the most variety. A lot of places were just about planting trees, painting, or trash picking, but Southern needed all three.
We got to Southern around 9:15 a.m. The tree planting instructor hadn’t arrived yet, so we stood around for a half hour drinking Starbucks coffee and eating apples. The team leader broke us off into little groups, the ones who were allowed to stand around doing nothing while we waited for the tree lady (Go Team Lush!), the painters (where most people went), and the trash pickers.
I could be wrong here, but I don’t remember seeing a single person volunteer to collect trash.
I haven’t seen any official number of how many people the city is claiming volunteered that day, but I feel that it is worth noting that out of the 50 or 60 people there, 80% of them were City Year kids. This is not to knock City Year in any way. I just think its worth being honest that the “city” didn’t really volunteer (at least in our location, obviously I can’t bi-locate. Yet.), a couple people volunteered and a lot of people were required to be there.
Anyway, the tree lady showed up and I learned that planting trees is hard. You’d think common sense would have let me know that by now, but please remember I’ve spent my entire life living in a city and have never had a yard of any kind – not even the yards most of my friends have that are the size of a box and completely concrete.
There’s an amusing story my mother likes to tell about the first time I went to see one of her friends in Jersey. I got out of the car and immediately started pulling the grass out of her front lawn. Apparently I was aghast that her entire house was surrounded by the weeds I help my mother pull out of our sidewalk.
Again, I digress. So Team Philly Lush and girl-whose-name-I-forget-let’s-call-her-Sue are now stuck with the task of planting this tree, which will apparently die if we do one of a thousand things wrong. The people that knew what they were doing threw us some tools and walked away.
Reason #1 that you don’t throw down tools and walk away (this is a real conversation):
me: I know you two are going to make fun of me for this. But…ok, see that hoe *points at it*. I know what its called, and I know its used for gardening…but…what the hell do we do with it?
John: Uhhhhh…..
Sue: *awkward shuffling around*
me: Awesome. This is going to end well.
Reason #2 would be when we started digging up the dead roots from the old trees that were in the lot.
Reason #3 was when John and I were informed that we were using the wrong kind of shovel. Apparently there are different kinds of shovels! It’s this kind of knowledge that makes the idea of having a yard in my future house both exciting and terrifying.
Using the correct shovels!
Thankfully, it all worked out in the end. I now know that there are different kinds of shovels and what each one is used for. The tree didn’t die. And we got lots of free coffee. John and I were even “volunteered” (note the quotations. It’s like when you volunteer for something in high school because if you don’t you’ll fail the class) to prep the hole that Mayor Nutter was going to use for his photo shoot…that he was an hour and a half late for.
Don't look so smug, Mr. Nutter. We know who dug that.
I would definitely recommend doing the Spring cleanup next year. Even though this entry feels like it reads a little cynically, we both had a lot of fun, and got a nice sense of accomplishment out of it. I walk by that tree we planted every day on my way home from work, and its nice to know I actually did something.
P.S. I’m keeping a list of the weird ways people have found this blog (there are way too many people out there who search for “sexy Tauren”). I wonder how many people will search for hoes…
Adventures in Adulthood 
