Eugene and I went on our “aimless drift” yesterday through the Baxter community – starting from Wealthy Market and progressing (basically) south, occasionally ricocheting off our East/West boundaries. It was easy enough to find space that was unused and abandoned just outside the commercial mini-districts around Wealthy, Franklin, and Diamond. There are also plenty of residential areas that appear abandoned and could apply to the assigned project, but I think the issue of trespassing becomes more personal in these spaces, and could result in a very unsafe situation. Besides safety, we discussed problems about being too secluded/hidden, needing to surmount fences, and how to extract permission to use certain spaces. What we finally came to was a location behind (the assumedly former) Lillie’s, a seasonal kiosk-style barbeque/ice cream shop. It is located on Neland, just north of Franklin. The building provides a nice sound barrier, while not blocking our sunlight. The soil looks nice and black – as opposed to the mostly sandy/gravel dirt at the other locations we noted. I’m really excited about getting started – I think Eugene and I might go trash hunting on Thursday (we saw some potential rain collection barrels and other functional discards). Hopefully the next blog will include a photo!

Craig