DiaryOfAWorm: May, 2008 Article Archive

Good Dump - Saturday, May 31, 2008

Good Dump at DMZ

Leaving the church hall with my box of food from Share, I got a call from Dawn that Growing Power was coming to the DMZ with more compost, seeds and plants. When I got there Dawn and Marna, my partners in the DMZ, were already there. Soon the neighborhood children started to arrive to see what was happening and the Growing Power Truck pulled up with a trailer of good compost. Marna had worked out some kind of deal with Will of Growing Power where she purchased and was given compost, plants and seeds for her garden and the DMZ. The Growing Power person gave us some advice and than left. Marna and Dawn had to leave also but the youth and I stayed around for a while to build two new mounds or raised beds. Now we have five, two planted and three we can plant next week. I think, thanks to Marna, we got more plants and seeds that we can use but that is a good position to be in. There is always more garden space available. We started on new DMZ Garden picture page tonight and will add more in the next few days and as the garden grows. I finally figured out how to say some of the names of the children helping us and then they started to give us their nicknames. Some of the nicknames were tricky to spell properly as the real names. I am going to bring some of the pictures along with me next week and have the kids write their names on the back of picture. All the pictures from Jan. 10th on will be dated. Dawn has also been taking pictures and together we should have a good history of the garden.

Almost Ready Garden - Friday, May 30, 2008

Almost Ready Garden

Today I did it! I spent 3 full hours working in my home model growing power garden. I pruned the trees and bushes, planted some more seeds, built up the compost pile, planted some more pots along the driveway fence and finished the irrigation system. In the next few days I need to finish off some mounds, plant some more seeds and plants and then sit back and watch it grow. Actually I will be in the maintenance, harvesting and building soil for the future stage. But this next stage is less work and more fun. Of course in this scenario I am not counting the rain garden that I am building in part of my front lawn. There I am not ready. I must prepare this land; divert the water from the sewer system into a rain barrel and into the garden before June 21st when the plants are picked up at the Milwaukee Sewage Department. However, my back yard garden is almost ready.

Good Intentions - Thursday, May 29, 2008

Planting onions in the DMZ

Each day, since last Monday, Memorial Day, I have had good intentions of working in my garden. But something also comes up, another prayer service today for a homicide victim, going grocery shopping, picking something up from the hardware store and, the number one thing, working in the DMZ garden. During this running around I have picked up a few more plants and things for the garden, like stakes to keep down the irrigation hose, and tomorrow I plan to get busy in my garden. The only thing stopping me may be the rain. We need the rain but I hope it is early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Good intentions are not enough to get something done.

The other day the older boys working in the DMZ garden asked if we were going to plant onions. I said why not, and had intentions to do so. The next day I was in the hardware store and saw a big bag of yellow onions starters cheap. I purchased it, planted a few in my garden and today the two boys planted the rest in one of the completed mounds in the DMZ. Sometimes good intentions work out.

Another Day, Another Bed - Wednesday, May 28, 2008

David sifting soil in the DMZ

My energy level went up today. Perhaps it was the sun. It was still cool but sunny. I did not get much done in my home model garden today, but we got another raised bed built at the DMZ garden. This was mostly due to a couple of older boys in the neighborhood who really worked consistently for the two hours I was there. We still lack enough tools and adult supervision, especially with younger kids, but progress is being made. The most important thing is that the children and adults in the neighborhood are becoming invested in the DMZ community garden. Community involvement is essential, according to Will Allen, for an effective GP community garden. He is right as always.

Tired but Going On - Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Building a mound DMZ 05/28

Yesterday after building another mound at the DMZ community garden I came home, had dinner and just sat in my easy chair the rest of the evening, watching sports on TV, reading my email on wife’s laptop and finally getting up and going to bed. The last few days I have been extremely physically tired. I seem to go through a similiar rite every spring. I remember once when I was in college in St. Louis, after final exams in philosophy, going to my bed in the Jesuit dorm and just sleeping for a day or so. My body must wear out in spring and need a renewal for the summer months. Fortunately my partners in the DMZ, Marna, Dawn and the neighborhood children, do not have such a serious attacks of tiredness and work goes on in the DMZ. Yesterday we finished our second mound in the garden and today hope to complete the third one. The gardening goes on despite on person’s sleepiness.

Rest In Peace - Monday, May 26, 2008

Rachel resting in peace

Today while I was working on the garden, Loren, my son’s friend who lived here for a while and helped me build the Growing Power Box and the Worm Condo, came by with his three-month-old daughter Rachel. My wife was able to get her baby fix for the day, and Peter was able to visit with his good friend. I kept working on the garden, taking time out for pictures of Rachel. In this picture Rachel is peacefully sleeping with the quiet garden in the background. Rachel’s mom and dad have their struggles but she stays calm. This seems like a good image of Memorial Day. Rather than cooking out ribs and brats we should be quietly remembering the soldiers who have fallen in battle. Like Rachel, they rest in peace.

Hard Rain Falling - Sunday, May 25, 2008

The rain falls down hard on the dry ground.
Tomorrow the world will be greener.

Yesterday was my granddaughter, Carolee’s birthday. Today is my son’s Peter’s birthday and tomorrow is my friend Ann’s birthday.

Ann is a wonderful person I knew from Church who had worked hard and was just retiring to a lifecycle of prayer, reflection and service when she was struck by a mysterious disease. After many months, many doctor appointments, many tests and much pain she now knows some about her illness. But the pain, medicine and exams continue. She has not been able to make a Faith In Recovery meeting at church for a long time. Through all this she remains hopeful of returning to good health and full of gratitude for her life. God Bless Ann.

Beautiful and Food Weeds - Saturday, May 24, 2008

Saving the Dandelion

This morning I read an email from a friend about foraging wild plants, some would call weeds, that are edible, good “nutritionally, well-adapted to conditions and independent of our care.” This sounded interesting to me and I said to my wife that I should check this out. She said that when we pick wild grape leaves to make the Lebanese dish of grape leaves we are foraging. I never looked at it as foraging, although I have been picking grape leaves all my life in parks, along fences and in my backyard. However, persons watching me picking leaves off of vines probably did. There is a whole wide world out there in wild plants to forage and eat.

Today we traveled up north near Pulaski, Wisconsin to help celebrate my granddaughter’s 4 year old birthday. The two of us went to take a walk along the Yellow Dandelion Road. She stopped to pick some dandelions on the lawn before the lawnmower cut them down. She did not look at them as food, although dandelion greens are, but as something of beauty to be saved from the lawnmower. I guess they are both, to the eye of a child beautiful flowers and to the eye of the forager food

KAN Grow - Friday, May 23, 2008

Kacie King checked honey
production at the North Philadelphia
farm, Greensgrow, which provides
fresh food where it is rare.

In one of my past lives I was a Saul Alinsky style community organizer. I organized a neighborhood coalition of Church and neighborhood groups on the north side of Philadelphia called Kensington. The community organization was called Kensington Action Neighborhood or simply KAN. The organization of working class people won some victories and gained some power in the few years I was the organizer building it. In this time it was a neighborhood in change from an industrial base, mostly mills, to something else. The neighborhood was one of row houses, 17 foot wide but three floors, one after another. The population at the time was mostly Catholic Irish, so there were many children in one block of row houses on both sides. Both my sons were very young at the time but they played together with children of all ages, mostly on the streets, as was the custom in this family-based neighborhood. The Kensington neighborhood had many problems and issues at the time but safety was not one of them. Parents, Grandparents, children all looked after each other and took care of each other. Often I felt like I was living in nineteen-century neighborhood, where families lived, worked, prayed and played together generation after generation. It was the neighborhood pictured in the first Rocky movie, which was being shot at the time we lived there. We went to see the movie at a theater near Kensington and Allegheny (K & A) where you could buy a fresh, large pretzel with mustard for ten cents.

I often wondered how this neighborhood was doing now, 33 years later. Now, instead of being a community organizer, I am into growing power home gardening and nonviolence. So you can understand my delight and joy when my friend Harvey Taylor sends me an article from the New York Times about urban farming in Kensington.

Chaordic Children - Thursday, May 22, 2008

Children of San Felix, Venezuela

The word Chaordic strikes me as a good description of my day today, in and our of the gardens. My friend Godsil first introduced me to the word chaordic that refers to a “system that blends characteristics of chaos and order.” Working at the DMZ today with five kids, no other adults and not the right tools, I felt chaordic. There was some chaos but we did plant some salad green seeds and get some of a new raised bed started. Probably the most ordered part of the day was at lunch at the Amaranth Café with Tegan Dowling, the wiki web master of this and many other web pages. As it turns out although she had never met Dave, co-owner of the Café or been there before, she had some web business with him to discuss as he tries to get the Washington Park Beat newspaper online. The most chaos I experienced today was in a conversation with my son at dinner tonight. We have much in common but always present each other with a completely different viewpoint. He taught me about the paradox of life and I keep reminding him about it. A third party listening to our conversation would really think we were having a major disagreement and conflict but actually we really do understand each other, maybe too well.

Signs of Spring - Wednesday, May 21, 2008

There are many signs that spring is here to stay. The red cardinal bird appears more often in my garden, although he still evades being photographed. A group of five young boys in the neighborhood around the DMZ garden helped me build the first raised bed or mound today in the DMZ garden. As we were completing it the sound of the ice cream truck could be heard. One of the boys had a tough time selecting one of the offers but finally did and we all enjoyed our treat. Despite my bad back I was able to do more planting today in the garden and hopefully over the Memorial day weekend will finish more of the planting. The Milwaukee Brewers now have won two games in a row and the Green Bay Packers had a spring practice today. Schools are finishing and students are graduating. I lost a bet with my wife today and now really have to clean my bedroom dresser and office. Spring-cleaning is here.

All is Well - Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Besides resting my sore back today I got a little work in on the home growing power model. My friend Godsil had dug deep into his well of friends and acquaintances and discovered someone interested in a joint venture making worm condos for community gardens. Alex, a friend of my friend Godsil, came over to look at my Worm Condo. He thinks he and his brother can draw up plans to build one and produce some simply for the DMZ and other community gardens that could use them. After he was done looking around here I took him over to the nearby Habitat for Humanity Resale Store on Hawley road. For anyone interested in affordable construction materials, this is a dream place. I was not planning on buying anything but when I saw some paving stones for around my upcoming rain garden in the front yard I could not resist. Alex loaded them in my car and my son, Peter, unloaded them at home. The back gives me a good excuse for not doing any heavy lifting.

Pain in the Back - Monday, May 19, 2008

There are many “pains in the back”. I got a literal “pain in the back” when I bent over my grocery cart today in the store. Fortunately it was the last stop on my errand run so I painfully made it back home and got my son to help me unload the groceries. But my ability to work in the garden today was gone and that added to the “pain in the back.” I also had to cancel my presence at two meetings today because of the back pain but that was okay. It was when I went to install updated Antivirus software in my wife’s and son’s computers that the mental “pain in the back” went in gear. I had installed the same software on my computer quite easily but in their two, one old and one new, I ran into all kinds of problems. It has been awhile since I have experienced computer frustration, so after a few hours of back pain and frustration I gave up. Maybe one “pain in the back” affects the other one? So now because of these two pains in the back, literal and computer related, I am further behind in two of my priorities, growing the garden and the nonviolent worm domain. Tomorrow is a new day and I will work, if I can, on the garden and web domain before trying again to install this computer software on the two computers.

Vertical Growing Up and Down - Sunday, May 18, 2008

New Trellis in Garden

I remember Will Allen of Growing Power visiting my sunroom over 2 ½ years ago and saying how much growing room I had in my 8’ X 10’ sunroom. He was talking about vertical growing space, growing up and down in the room. I have done a few things with this space, like add a growing shelf below the GP box and hang a few plants from the ceiling. But I have kept this thought of using vertical growing space in mind. Last year my friend Andor built two vertical growers for the garden. They worked well growing plants like beans or cucumbers that grow up on a trellis, growing plants like salad greens in the box, and producing tea for fertilizer. I have just set up the two vertical growers this year and planted seeds on the two sides of one of them. This year I have taken the vertical growing idea one step further in the garden. Observing how a friend in Wild Rose, WI had grown pole beans on the fence in his garden, I built myself a crude wire climber over one of my raised beds. Like the construction of my sifter, my handiwork leaves something to be desired, but the vertical growing device will work. The last few years I grew pole beans along the side of the garage. However, this new grower should increase the quantity and quality of the beans to be grown. Also, it can be used for other vertical growing plants like cucumbers. Hopefully in a few months this new trellis will be full of food and will need to be strengthened with more wooden poles. Vertical Growing can also go downward as with the plants hanging in the sunroom or planters on hooks along the fence around the garden. Up or Down, Vertical Growing is the way to get more production out of the same amount of space.

The Yellow Dandelion Road - Saturday, May 17, 2008

Dog on the Yellow Dandelion Road

Carolee, my granddaughter, will be four in two weeks. In the celebration of her birthday there will be great joy but a little tinge of sadness for me. For me, three marks the heights of childhood innocence and the freedom that comes with it. Carolee can still see a dandelion as a flower not a weed. It is still beautiful to her. She has not been told that a dandelion lawn is not right and the dandelions need to be killed.

When I was up north at my son’s family’s house last week I took the dog for a walk around the narrow but long strip of land behind the house. Hay and other plants grow wild on most of the land except for the road around the land where grass and dandelions mark the trail. I called it the ‘yellow dandelion road’ and I am not sure how it looked to the dog but to me it was thing of beauty. Carolee was in school at the time but I think she would agree. Is not “beauty in the eye of the beholder”?

Sifter for Worm Condo - Friday, May 16, 2008

New Sifter in Action

In yesterday’s posting (which I did today), I repeated a posting on Worm Condos. An important tool to use with a Worm Condo or a worm-enriched compost pile is a sifter. I built myself a new one today. It fits over my wheelbarrow and has wire-meshing wide enough to allow only the fine enriched compost (or castings) soil into the wheelbarrow. This is the worm-enriched soil needed for mixing with coir in planters, or for the top of the raised beds or mounds. At Growing Power where they have 20 or so worm condos, they have converted an old electric dryer machine to shake out the fine soil. But a simple handmade sifter is good enough for the home garden or community garden. Actually making a sifter is simple for anyone handy with basic tools. However, for me it was a chore. My father was an all-around handyman, but never showed me how to do what he did. But a sifter, a valuable tool, is so simple that even I could make one today. The soil you see to the left of the sifter is actually from the bottom of my compost pile, not from the worm enriched worm depository. Worms found their way into this compost and did their magic on it. So with some sifting you can find “black gold” to top off the mounds, to fertilize the seeds or to make tea

Worm Condo Revisited - Thursday, May 15, 2008

Filling the Worm Condo

At a meeting of community garden persons last Tuesday there was an interest in Worm Condos, and I was asked to draw up the plans for one and put it on their site. I plan to do so and also get one for the DMZ garden, but first is a repeat of the diary posting of October 20, 2007.

Finally today I did some work on the GP outside garden. One of the first things I did was drill a few more holes in the bottom of the worm condo to replace the ones that were plugged up. As regular readers of the this diary know one of the essential ingredients of a GP Home Model Garden is a Worm Condo. It is the place where worms can eat all the finely cooked compost they desire and leave the condo, when they are finished, full of the black gold of worm castings. After drilling the holes, I started to fill the box with leaves and some coffee grounds.

Soccer Papa - Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Today I experienced what it is like to be a soccer mom, or in my case a soccer grandfather. After picking up my granddaughter, 3, from preschool, I picked up my two grandsons, 10 and 8, from an after-school Bible School that they attend at the public school they attend. We came home and after a dinner, which my daughter-in-law had partially pre-made, we picked up a neighbor youth on the Dairy farm across the highway and all five of us went off to my 8 year old’s and friend’s soccer practice. After about an hour there, we left my 8 year old grandson and the neighboring youth, who were to be picked up by the neighbor’s parents, and my 10 year old grandson and my granddaughter and I went off to my 10 year old grandson’s soccer practice. While he was practicing soccer my granddaughter played on the playground until I finally talked her into walking through a homemade prairie. This stroll was the highlight of the soccer trips. After my 10 year old grandson’s practice we went back, picked up 8 year old grandson at the neighbor’s house, and got back home about the same time my daughter-law got home. My three year old granddaughter also plays soccer but fortunately had no practices tonight. Tomorrow I guess it is baseball practice.

Upfront and Personal - Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Tulips, Upfront and Personal

Today when working in the home garden I decided to take close-up pictures of some of the flowers and plants. The plants and flowers look more beautiful when they are seen up front and personal. This afternoon we built our first raised bed or mound at the DMZ garden. Even this bare mound of compost makes the barren garden look better.

Richard Oulahin Tonight I went to a funeral service for a friend Richard Oulahin I knew a long time ago, 1967–1969. Although our paths crossed briefly in recent years, my personal experience of him dates back to this time when, for a while, we lived in the same community house and were active together as students at Marquette University. So tonight when I heard all kinds of people testified to how great a person he was, especially with his work with Esperanza Unida, an employment training program, I could deeply appreciate Richard because of my personal experience of him back in the sixties. Tonight he went from someone I knew to someone who is a hero and inspiration in my life. When I met his family tonight it was like meeting persons I knew. Like the flowers and plants in the garden, knowing Richard upfront and personal, made the beauty of his life more real in my life.

Hope In Despair - Monday, May 12, 2008

Blowing in the Wind

Out of the rubble in Sadr city in Baghdad, Iraq a dead boy is risen up. The Iraqi boy’s family describes the fatal blast. The boy and others were killed by American missiles seeking to destroy Iraqi’s opposed to the American occupation.

American veterans describe in the “Winter Soldier Hearings” the horrors of the Iraq war they experienced.

An earthquake strikes China leaving over 10,000 dead. Thousands continue to suffer and die from a cyclone in Burma because the government will not allow in sufficient aid.

Another victim of a senseless homicide dies Sunday on the very spot where many years ago the first accredited high school, Independent Learning Center, for troubled youth was created.

Despair and death surrounds us. How do we go on without blinding ourselves to what is happening?

Mom and Fire - Sunday, May 11, 2008

Risen in Venezuela

After my watering the worm condo and worm depository yesterday, it rained today. Oh well, it is hard to have too much water for worms; they do not like it hot. Today was Mother’s Day, time to honor our moms, and the celebration in the church of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God came down on us and fired up the people of God. Just like the love of mother for her child, the flames of Pentecost continually burn and are unconditional.

Some say that when I talk about the home model of growing power I become animated and enthused; I say that when I talk about anything dear to the spirit of who I am, I become animated and enthused. It is just like in a good garden: when all the conditions are right, the life and harvest is overflowing with joy and hope. It is like the hope and joy I experienced in the people of Venezuela. They were so energetic and enthused about the Bolivian Socialist revolution taking place. You can feel it in their words, music and dance. When I returned from the GATE trip to Guatemala I experienced the same hope and joy. But there it was despite all the death and destruction in their country. In fact I named my diary of those experiences Buried in Guatemala. For my Venezuelan experience I decided to call the web page Risen in Venezuela. Also, I decided to change the format from that of diary to that of showing a picture, and in days to come I will be working on this project. Actually today, Mother’s Day and Pentecost, is a good day to start this project since it is a day to celebrate unconditional love and hope born of the Spirit.

Spring Tulips - Saturday, May 10, 2008

Tulips Today

Tulips are a beautiful flower but only for the early spring. It is still too chilly to plant most things, but it is highlight time for tulips. Tulips, like the red cardinal that stalks my garden, mark spring. I remember once being in Holland in June and there were tulips everywhere. But here they are special for the spring. They come, show their beauty and fade away till the next spring. My wife really likes tulips. Coming in our driveway I pointed out to her how the tulips were fully bloomed. She said we needed to plant more tulip bulbs. I asked why. She said “because I like them so much.” I guess that is a good reason, since if we like something we want more of it. However, personally I would like more time to enjoy and smell the tulips we have than more tulips

Blessed Trinity and a Worm - Friday, May 09, 2008

Symbol of
Blessed Trinity

(The pastor of our Church asked some of us to write a brief piece for a shared homily on our Church’s fest day, the Blessed Trinity. I started to write something profound, but ended up looking at the Blessed Trinity, Three Persons in One God, by looking at a worm. I will return to observations from the gardens tomorrow.)

From a worm we can learn about the Blessed Trinity. Both a worm and the Blessed Trinity are three in one. The Blessed Trinity is three persons in One God. One worm can be divided into three. Waste, nothing worthwhile, goes through a worm and comes out rich organic soil. The Blessed Trinity creates something from nothing, not even using waste. Seeds planted in the organic soil of worm castings grow new life. From the creation of the Blessed Trinity flows all new life. The Blessed Trinity and a worm are neither male nor female.

A worm is a cold-blooded creature that gives almost all of what it takes from the earth back to the earth in enriched soil. The Blessed Trinity so loved the world that God emptied himself and became one of us. This is greater love than if one of us decided to give ourselves for the good of all by becoming a simple worm.

Mother God - Thursday, May 08, 2008

Cosmic Mother God

We know that in God there is neither male nor female. However to talk about God, we often use human qualities. Most often these are male, like God the Father. However sometimes we talk about God in female terms, like Wisdom, Sophia, how she has been with God before the beginning of time or God’s love being like the unconditional love of mother. When we talk about God in creation, we often use the female tense. We talk about Mother Earth and Mother Nature. It is in the beauty and stillness of Mother Nature that often we can more easily find God. When I lived in Madison I remember one day, after walking through a beautiful park on a lake, being filled with the awe and beauty of Mother Nature. At that moment I felt close to God and felt like all of nature was struggling, like a mother, to bear new life. I felt like when we, like God in whose image we are created, can create, the world would end. This thought has stayed with me and is probably why I am so drawn by the growing power model of gardening. Somehow working in my garden at home or at the DMZ there is a sense of quiet and deep peace. It does not matter what you are doing, shoveling compost or planting seeds, there is a dark deep mystery in all of us and in nature that we call God, our Mother and Father.

One Body - Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Dorthy Day

Last night I struggled to say something in this “Diary of a Worm” that was said in 1955 by Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk. My friend Jim Forest in Holland sent this quote below to me today. It says more eloquently the thought I tried to express yesterday. Just a day late (or maybe not). Struggling to say in one’s own words an ageless truth is an okay exercise. The quote is below. Also today my friend Jim Forest sent me a review of a recently published book: “The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day”. Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, as many of you know, was a living saint that I was blessed to meet in life. Since all the papers of Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day are in the archives at Marquette, the book was published by the University of Marquette Press. I wonder what Dorothy Day would have thought of Marquette, the home of her records and diaries, being the home to four departments of military science for nine colleges and universities. As her granddaughter said in the MU Peace Petition “My grandmother Dorothy Day would be weeping today about the role that Catholics are playing in the endless war making.” You can read more about the diaries in an article in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Dorthy Day amd Thomas Merton were both naturally interested in nature, gardening and rural life.

Sitting Or Standing - Tuesday, May 06, 2008

DMZ 05/06

Sitting or standing, black or white, rich or poor, blue collar or white collar, able or disabled, young or old, the work in the DMZ community garden goes on. As Barack Obama said tonight in North Carolina, the politics of division, guilt by association, personalizing the issue is going by the wayside. There are now too many of us who, like St. Paul, believe each of us is “equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman.” {Galatians 3:28}. As with the DMZ community garden, the politics of life, when the truth is spoken, tells us that all persons are equal. In the garden this means the interdependence of plants, bugs, soil, sun, rain and worm; in faith this means we are all equal in God and his love is unconditional for all of us; in politics it means not playing the politics of division and playing one against another; for the world it means we are all brothers and sisters.

Bureaucracy Vs. Nature - Monday, May 05, 2008

Tonight I struggled with sending an email to a city official about an injustice where the city bureaucracy had finally won a victory over a friend by stalling and stonewalling and finally destroying records of the transaction. I worked on the email on and off during the evening, thinking about saving a draft but never did. Finally I pressed some wrong key and it was gone forever and I was unable to restore it. I tried to “restore” the computer to the point the email was lost but could not do this. I had my doubts about the letter; sometimes when you lose, it is best to be silent and move on no matter how just you think your cause. I took the accidental loss as a sign that maybe the email was not meant to be. I do not plan to rewrite it. This is difficult for me to do since I always want the last word when I think I am right. Yet one of the definitions for nonviolence that I like and use to describe Gandhi’s form of nonviolence is:
“Striving nonviolently to the point of sacrifice rather than fighting to attain one’s vision of truth.” The computer misstep made doing this easier tonight. From nature and the garden I should be learning this same point: letting go even when you feel an injustice has been done.

Fertilizing with tea - Sunday, May 04, 2008

‘Tea’ flowing through garden

Tea is the main warm drink of choice for many citizens of the world. For plants, tea made from worm castings is the fertilizer of choice. Making tea in a rain barrel from castings in painter’s bag is easy. What I needed in this home GP model garden is the way to easily distribute it. By using a four socket manifold and some sprinkler and soaker hoses I have solved this issue for my garden. There is an on/off switch at the bottom of the raised rain barrel, and four on/off switches on the 4 hose connectors. The rest is done by gravity and water pressure. I noticed when testing the system today that water pressure in the capped soaker hoses will move up and down in the spirals created on the right of the garden. Now all I need to fertilize most of my garden is keep the tea bags in the rain barrel fresh with castings and to turn the water on. Thus we now have a simple and affordable fertilizing system. In the picture on the side each color represents a hose coming from the manifold: red, green, purple and black. Soaker hoses are better to use. Since the end is capped there is nowhere for the water to go except thorough the porous sides of the hose. I have a system in front of the house for the flowers and bushes near the house. This hose is also connected to a rain barrel that will have a ‘tea’ bag in it. So rain from the sky falls on the house and garage into rain barrels and flows through porous bags of castings to make ‘tea’, then runs though soaker hoses to fertilize plants.

Waiting for the Red Cardinal - Saturday, May 03, 2008

Today I was waiting for the red cardinal. I was not waiting for the red cardinal of the Catholic Church, or the red cardinal of the St. Louis Baseball teams but for the red cardinal bird that has been visited my garden and yard the last few days. The red cardinal stands out from the robins and sparrows that frequent my yard looking for bird food or worms. I am not sure what the attraction of the garden is for this red cardinal or if it is the same red cardinal I see all the time. I do know that whenever I go for the camera to capture the red cardinal’s picture it disappears. Today I had my camera ready with the zoom lens sitting in the sunroom but still could not take the bird’s picture. For a while I just stood still on the side of the garden waiting for the red cardinal. Birds came and went but not the red cardinal. It is almost like if I capture the red cardinal with the camera the bird will no longer exist. So maybe it is best I just simply enjoy this unusual bird.

Groundwork For DMZ - Friday, May 02, 2008

Groundwork of DMZ

Anything worthwhile in life needs groundwork before it can become effective. The same is true for the DMZ community garden. Again today Dawn, Marna and I laid down cardboard and wood chips to cover the ground of the vacant lot. From this ground foundation of cardboard and wood chips we will raise mounds of the Same Old, Same Old and grow renewable, affordable food (G.R.A.F.). Laying the foundation is a lot of work but it will pay off in future growing. Laying the foundation of any worthwhile enterprise is hard work, but having a solid foundation does pay off. I remembered when I was a salesperson for a direct mail advertising magazine, how hard it was to get a business to try this form of advertising but how loyal and worthwhile businesses were after they were served with good care and found the form of advertising effective. The more hard work I put in building the base of customers the more profitable the business adventure was. The same is true for my home model GP garden and for the DMZ community garden.

Dead or Alive - Thursday, May 01, 2008

By Dustin Graf

Today I was the chaperon for my grandson, Dustin, 10, as his class from up north toured the Milwaukee Public Museum. Over the years I have been to the museum many times, as a child, parent and grandparent, so I was familiar with most of the exhibits. However, for my grandson everything was new and fresh. He was excited by the exhibits, took a long look and took time to read about what he was looking at. When I started taking pictures of the exhibits with my camera he wanted to do the same. He did and took some good pictures that made the exhibits look like they were alive, like the one here. Not knowing we shot the pictures at the museum, you could mistake them for pictures of animals we took on a safari. However, after awhile when my grandson saw something new and exciting, the first thing he did was not read about the exhibit but ask for the camera to take a picture. He was more interested in taking a picture of the exhibit than in taking a long look at it and reading about it. I reminded him that first we needed to look at the exhibit and understand what it was before taking a picture. He seemed to understand that often we are quick to take a picture, freeze something even though it is not alive, before we look at it and learn about what we are seeing. We can take a picture of something without ever experiencing it.