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Bird'seye view of lakeland Corectinal Facilityshowing the garden plots
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Photo: lakelandcraigslistflorida.blogspot.com/2020/07/lakeland-correctional-facility.html
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Much of my time is being spent out being spent out in the garden or greenhouse here. We've been weeding and turning the soil over in the garden plots. We donate onions, bell & banana peppers, as well as romaine lettuce and cabbage in the section of the foodbank garden I work in. So far we have 7,000 onions planted and 480 seedlings of the first round of lettuce almost ready to be planted. We've been germinating plants in the greenhouse for both the foodbank gardens and personal prisoner plots. We have the peppers, okra, and Zinnia flower seedlings going in the greenhouse right now. We share it with the other section of the foodbank garden which grows other vegetables like squash, zucchini, eggplant, and pumpkins. I don't know how much their section donated last year, but the section I'm working in now donated over 4500 kg.
I may have mentioned last fall that some of the men assigned to personal plots are medically unable to tend their plots. It's part of my responsibility to prepare and tend their plots just as I would my own. We have four areas on the compound where there are prisoner plots, and each area is supposed to have workers assigned to it. I work in C-gardens where the foodbank gardens are. B-gardens haven't had any regular workers for the past two years, and, with the onset of Covid last year, B-gardens was completely neglected. The grass and weeds encroached so much that some of the plots had narrowed to just over 2 meters wide when they're supposed to be 3. We went in and widened them all back out to 3 meters the first half of last week. Then, Thursday and Friday, we sadly removed the flower beds along the building which formed a "U" around the B-garden area. The beds were roughly 10.5 cm wide. They had been terribly overgrown with weeds, and prisoners had been throwing rocks in them as well. We removed all the flowers, shrubs, and weeds. We are supposed to get grass seed to spread in them this week.
So much time has been spent working, that everything else in my life has been getting neglected. I regret having to admit that even my sitting practice has gone a little neglected as well. I come in from the gardens and crash on my bed. When I do watch television, it's just long enough to catch some news of what's going on in the world. What's been going on in India and Myanmar has been very troubling. I'm feeling a measure of confidence that something will finally be done about the police brutality here in the U.S. The whole "War on crime" theme brought on a militaristic mentality within the various police forces across the country. I remember as a child that the police actually walked though the neighborhoods and got to know the citizens they were charged to protect. Nowadays, the only time you see them is when they ride through the neighborhood on their way to answer a call or when you need to call them.
With Metta,
Steve