I was thinking about our conversation from yesterday regarding the patio project and realized I never followed up with the measurements you asked for. The space along the north wall is actually eleven feet eight inches from the corner to the edge of the sliding door frame. That should give us enough room for the long bench if we keep the depth under twenty-two inches. I also checked the slope and it runs about one and a half inches over the full span, which is manageable without any major leveling work. The afternoon sun hits that side hard between two and six, so maybe we move the seating arrangement slightly toward the oak tree to catch more shade.
I spoke with Marcus about the gravel delivery and he said their schedule opens up after the third week of the month. Apparently the quarry had some equipment downtime but everything is back on track now. He mentioned they can drop the base layer first and then come back for the decorative stone once we have the borders set. I think that makes sense rather than trying to do it all in one day and rushing through the edging work. Let me know what works on your side and I can coordinate with him directly. We still need to pick up the landscape fabric and a few stakes from the hardware store.

Alright so regarding the question about the community garden plots, here is how it works. Each household can sign up for one main plot and one herb plot if they want both. The main plots are roughly eight feet by four feet and they get assigned by lottery at the start of the season. You can put in your preferences for which row you want but honestly the front row near the water spigot fills up fast so most people end up somewhere in the middle. The herb plots are smaller, about three feet by two feet, and those are first come first served on signup day. We usually get a rush early in the morning but it calms down by mid afternoon.
The soil tests came back with normal nitrogen and slightly low phosphorus so adding a small amount of bone meal during planting should do the trick. We are also switching to a drip irrigation schedule on Mondays and Thursdays instead of watering every day because the tomatoes were getting blossom end rot last summer. The cucumber vines need a trellis this year, the ground ones got mildew by late July. Chris has extra bamboo poles and said anyone can take some from behind the tool shed as long as they leave the pile neat.