Our question is not, ‘How do you run a family business for 68 years, earning a nearly flawless 4.9 rating on Yelp and Google and everywhere else, then go out on your own terms, universally beloved, and with a well-deserved major windfall?’
Nor are we asking what will become of the 1.64 acres at 952 Memorial Drive SE, now that our good neighbors at Reid’s Body Shop have packed it in, and the property changes hands from developer to developer.
We have a different question, one that came to us after breakfast. We walked out the front door of Home grown, smacking our lips, and looked off to our right. There we saw – glowing in the slant light, stretching most of a block, growing through chain link fence as it had for decades – perhaps the finest swath of cosmos in all of Atlanta.
Thousands of orange flowers. Intentional, not accidental. Swarming with bees. Aflutter with butterflies. Beacons of beauty and grace, growing up through the cracks. Sublime. The question that occurred to us that morning was, ‘What will become of all those cosmos once the bulldozers roll through?’
Our friend the naturalist told us that, though cosmos weren’t natives, they’ve grown here for hundreds of years. They’re hospitable, feeding pollinators, and play a crucial role in our urban ecosystem. Their preferred habitat? Marginal conditions: poor soil, cracks in sidewalks, not much water, blazing sun. She also told us they were easy to grow from seed, and though not perennial, reseeded themselves readily.
Wait – what?
Reid’s. Seeds. Reseed.
Right then it went from ‘maybe there’s an idea here’ to ‘oh hell yeah.’
Week after week, our dedicated volunteers gathered the precious, might-soon-be-bulldozed seeds. Another Ranger walked the neighborhood, mapping 80 possible sites where growing conditions felt right. We whittled this down to 30 patches, spread all across Reynoldstown. This spring, we planted. Next year, our 30 sites will become 50, then more and more.
We are Reynoldstown. Home of the Cosmos.