I was looking at the garden space behind the garage and thinking about how we might arrange things this year. The area gets about six hours of sunlight which should work well for tomatoes and peppers on the south side. I remember you mentioned wanting to try cucumbers again after that successful batch last summer. The soil tested slightly acidic so we might need to amend it with some lime before planting. I could pick up a few bags of compost from the landscape supply place on Main Street if you want to go in on that together. The raised beds we built two years ago are still in decent shape but the southwest corner of the frame has some rot starting. We could reinforce it with cedar boards which would last longer than the pine we used initially. Let me know what you think about the layout and whether you want to stick with the same crop plan or try something different this season.

I also looked at seed catalogs last night and noticed a few new tomato varieties that might handle the humidity better than what we planted before. The purple cherry tomatoes we saw at the farmers market could be worth trying in a small section. I would be happy to start the seeds indoors if we get the soil amendments ready by mid-spring. Let me know when you have time to walk the plot together and mark the zones.

I checked with the community center coordinator and they confirmed we can use the meeting room on the third Saturday of next month for the book exchange. They have folding tables and chairs available so we won't need to bring our own setup. I was thinking we could organize by genre this time since last year everyone was just digging through boxes randomly. We could label tables for fiction, non-fiction, children's books, and cookbooks which seemed like a popular category last time. My neighbor donated about thirty books she's been meaning to pass along including some nice hardcover editions. I will plan to arrive around 9 in the morning to set up tables and arrange the signage. The event is scheduled to run from 10 until 2 in the afternoon. If you could bring those cardboard collection boxes from your office that would be helpful for people to carry books home.

We also need to decide whether to allow each person to take up to five books or keep it open ended like last year. Some folks mentioned they wanted more variety so maybe we could do a token system where everyone gets ten tokens to exchange for books. Let me know what you think about that approach and whether you have time to help with the flyers.