Beehives and Rooftop Gardens

Recently, we went down the street to see our old friend Sean. Sean and I met long ago on a remote hilltop in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as college. Back then, I gave Sean some tips about growing tomatoes, but he never believed me until some fancy Seattle urban farmer confirmed these tomato facts. It's ok though, we can still be friends.
These days, Sean is part of a group of people renovating a giant building here in Ballard. Only few artists and small businesses occupy the building at the moment, but there are plans for more studios, retail space, and a potential mini ramp (do it!).
We toured the building all the way from its giant windows with sweeping views of the mountains to the creepy serial killer basement.

Here we saw newly installed bees!

It was the first really warm day of the year when we visited and the beehive was in a frenzy. Some alarm was expressed about the size and fury of the swarm but no one was stung and no epinephrine was administered. We hear it might take another year to get a significant amount of honey. We'll be waiting....

After the bees, we climbed the sketchiest spiral staircase ever up to the rooftop. The rooftop garden is currently in the works.

The beds will be built with french drain components to allow watering from below the plants. Porous tubes in the bottom of each bed are filled with water, sand around the tubes wicks the water out, making it available to the roots of the plants.
The same system also allows any excess water to be siphoned out via a spout on the outside of the bed. Since a rooftop garden can't drain water like a normal garden, this will prevent the formation of a muddy bog during the rainy winter months.

We're excited to see the plants, and see the system working. But there is this issue of getting three...no, eight(!) yards of dirt up three stories of building. Get those pulleys and buckets!