This blog was interrupted by a round of shingles, then an accidental community garden, then the Fringe festival, and then a school year. And throughout it all there were the trials and tribulations of working with a volunteer board of varying degrees of competence and self-interest.

We are back, and crankier than ever.

Saturday was the main planting day for the temporary community garden on the site where the Mount Royal Hotel used to stand.

The garden was made with straw wattles in a panopticon design by Tiffany Shaw-Collinge as part of the 2012 Dirt City/Dream City transitory art project in Edmonton's Quarters District. A late start meant the garden was only ready for planting on Canada Day.

I contacted as many of the previous gardeners as I had e-mails for and asked them to spread the word. but a garden that starts that late in the season, and has no security or fence, is not attractive to people who want to grow and harvest their own vegetables. A small group of people did commit, especially neighbour Jack Dong - an octogenarian former tai chi instructor. Jack was the guardian angel of the garden in 2012.

Jack was at the garden on Friday - I had already dug four of the beds earlier in the week. Jack told me he had not been well this winter. At one point he had thought he would die, and he told his doctor so. At 82, he said, he felt it would be all right if he died, even if most members of his family live to 86. I told him to take it easy and I would be back on Saturday.

When I was on the board of the Boyle Street Community League I had received permission to use to concrete room in the basement of the new Plaza as a place to start seedlings for the community garden. Our growing season is so short.

More than 100 tomato plants (across three varieties), dozens of red cabbage, dozens of okra seedlings, hundreds of onion sets, dozens of honeydew melon seedlings, some burgundy cauliflower - plus zinnias, lavender, snapdragons... I shepherded them through, gradually hardening them off by taking them outside every day for a week (increasing the time each day). There were some seeds that didn't germinate, too, and others that were too delicate for the grow lights and the dryness (two astilbe seedlings survived out of dozens). And I have seeds for peas, turnips, beets, beans, nasturtiums, and corms for iris, glads, acidanthera...

Because the site has no security and there is no guarantee people will be able to harvest, I am providing all of these free of charge to the people who are willing to garden.

So Saturday I showed up. Jack Dong was surprised to see me - he had already forgotten about our conversation of the previous day. He gamely tried some raking and then went to rest.

The next visitor to the garden was a man who had been drinking. He talked at me for some time about everything I was doing wrong - from his perspective as an Ontario farmer who knew a lot about growing marijuana (which he had stopped doing some 15 years ago, he assured me). He couldn't take in anything, but he was unstoppable when it came to telling me the principles of pH monitoring and manure. While I tried to finish some of the planting, he kept up a non-stop rattle - some of which was useful advice, and some of which was wasted because if he had been paying attention he would have noticed that I was already doing things the "right" way. After about 40 minutes of advice, some of which was contradictory, I told him I was not a very sociable person and I had reached my limit. He had done nothing wrong, and his advice was appreciated, but could he please leave now? He did - apologizing as he did so. I reassured him that he had done nothing wrong - and he hadn't - but that I had low tolerance.

My low tolerance tends to be for anyone who wants to talk to me when they have been drinking. Those urgent, yeast-breathy tones where every element is equally portentously weighted.

Before the former grow-op meister cleared the garden, his spot was taken by a man who had already had an interesting day, if his split lip and cloth bag of clothing were any indication. His desire to help was lovely - he took one look around and announced that this was too big a job and he would help. Unfortunately, whatever drug he was on made him hyper and belligerent. He tore at the plastic seedling cells (which I re-use from year to year) and started chucking things into the nearest bed - which had already been planted.

"Please stop. That bed is already planted. I appreciate your enthusiasm, and if you want to join the garden, you can start with the larger unplanted plot on the west side. Here - I can give you these plants and you can get started right away."

"You can't tell me what to do - this is a community garden and I can do what I want, and, besides, you didn't build it."

"Actually, I DID help build it last year and I coordinate the gardeners."

"You can't tell me what to do. It's a community garden and it isn't like you bought the plants."

"Yes. I did. I bought the seeds and the bulbs and I started them myself and looked after them and I donated them to the garden."

He pointed to the tomato seedlings he had chucked in - he was angry because he didn't know what they were.

"They are tomatoes, and they don't belong in that part of the garden," I said.

"Water them," he ordered.

"No, I won't. You have a choice: if you want to garden, then you can have a plot of your own and I will give you the plants and seeds. But community gardens have rules, and you are not allowed to plant in someone else's plot."

"You need to learn to be more welcoming; you need to take a course in public relations. This isn't your garden."

"Yes, it is. And you need to leave now."

"If you try and make me stop, I'll smash your head in."

"No, you won't," I said. "I am calling the police. I take threats seriously."

And so I called the police on my cell phone, and my visitor grudgingly got up, calling threats and accusing me of stealing his bag (which he had left behind - and I actually called out to him and brought it over to him, even as I was on the phone with the police) and of giving him the split lip etc.

After he had gone and the police had been assured that I no longer needed their assistance, I went back to gardening. My right arm wouldn't straighten. This is a response I have had before after facing people who are violent - vasoconstriction. It feels as if all my veins and arteries have somehow retracted and are now too short for me to extend my arm. This is a response to adrenaline that has been documented in medical studies. I continued to dig, enduring the pain as my arm gradually relaxed.

I am not proud of these interactions. I should have been more resilient. At the same time, there is no way of talking to the drugs. Maybe if he had not been preceded by the other visitor, maybe I would have been better able to cope - but I was trying to get the garden planted and these people were busy making their addictions my problem. What would have happened if this man had shown up when frail Jack was alone in the garden?

Then the four young evangelicals showed up. Students at one of the universities and members of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, they are living at a church in the neighbourhood so they can better understand the challenges facing the residents. One of them is studying pharmacology. Grreat. I have had a drug grower, a drug user, and now a future drug distributor.

The smart thing to do would have been to say "Here: grab some seedlings and let's get to work making things better."

Instead I asked them about themselves, told them what I do when I am not fending off intruders at the garden. They stood there, the four of them, seeming uncomfortable (which they were, probably, because of the sun) while I thought "This is also not getting the garden planted. I am not an object to be studied." They left. Perhaps I am not interesting enough - not needy enough.