Marty digs in.

Meet Marty. Marty has gardened all his life at his own family home. Now that he has moved to Mirabella--a new (and lovely!) retirement complex on the edge of the South Lake Union neighborhood, which, as it happens, is within sight of the Cascade P-Patch--he finds he still has the love and the tools that make for a good gardener.

And so he packed into a small meeting room at Immanuel Lutheran Church yesterday to join an enthusiastic group of new and old gardeners to embark on a new spring at Cascade. Some have been gardening there as long as the garden has existed; some are brand new.

We were younger, older, men, women, black, white, natives, transplants--a happy tangle of life experiences. What united us? A love of coaxing things out of the earth and a desire to combat crabgrass. Let the digging begin!