"You should start a blog!"

I have had so many people tell me that as I relate to them the goings on in my little garden. My little garden is in Germantown, a predominantly black, although also very diverse urban neighborhood of Philadelphia. Within blocks of my house are some of the city's most prestigious private schools as well as terribly blighted blocks rife with drug and gang activity. And sprinkled around in there are working poor and middle class blocks with folks doing the best they can and enjoying life.
As the title of the blog suggests, I am white and I have been thinking critically about race and class for a long time. I grew up in a neighborhood very different from this one: just about all white upper middle class. My parents inherited the house and were working poor. This was evident to me from a young age as my neighbors drove their BMWs to private school and my dad took me in his work van to public school. My family was also very progressive with politics and NPR a regular part of each day. Long story short, I grew up, went to college, studied social movements for justice and equality, came out as a lesbian, and moved to Philadelphia to start my adult life.
Four years ago, my partner at the time and I were ready to buy a house, looked around, and bought this beautiful row house on a busy corner in the heart of Germantown, with a little front yard, side garden, street trees, and a postage stamp of a back yard. And then I discovered my obsession with gardening. I have found such joy in tending plants, weeding, composting, planing, planting, observing. And this hobby has made me a neighborhood fixture, I like to think. One rainy afternoon, I got home from school ad decided it was a perfect time to weed, what with the ground being softened from the rain and the mild spring temperature. And so, bare headed, I set to work pulling out the spring's batch of weeds from the side garden. People would walk past me, and I could all but hear them shaking their heads, "Crazy white lady, gardening on a day like today."
And so today, after a conversation with Marvin (I'll tell you about that later) I decided that it was finally time to start the blog, to help me process my  thoughts and feelings about living and gardening in this diverse neighborhood that I call home.