Some Blog World Activities

Well, we were hoping to get in another solid day in the garden today, but no such luck. The weather was just a little too miserable for yard work. Our next outside hurrah will be to plant our brassicas in their respective beds and erect the new bamboo flagpole. Hopefully we can get to it on Friday.

In the meantime, there are a few blog activities I wanted to give a shout for.

The first is actually long overdue. Kelly at Her Able Hands is putting together a project involving photos of your hands and a narrative to go along with it. I don't remember end result she is looking for when she has collected the submissions, but what ever it is, we gardeners have a very special relationship with our hands and I thought it would be cool to see those stories collected in some fashion. Meg and I are trying to get our submission together, but midterm grading and job searches have rudely gotten in the way. I don't think she has a time frame for any kind of deadline, but I'm sure she doesn't want to sit on it indefinitely. Kelly, if it's not too late we will get one out soon.

The second activity involves the Mouse & Trowel award, which Path to Freedom reminded us about on their journal. Meg and I are having great fun with the challenge of posting every day and we have had even more getting to know all of you. So, if you feel like giving a shout to some of your must-read blogs, this would be a wonderful way to do it. I usually don't believe in awards, I'm a mild socialist, but Path to Freedom has been a positive force for us in the garden blog world and any award they feel fit to promote is alright by me.

Stop Wasting Abandoned Property

On my train ride to and from work I pass through Philadelphia's unfortunate ring of garbage. I've begun to mentally catalogue the trash, deciphering what could be recycled and reused. Quite often the reuse qualities are garden related. Meg and I try to reuse before we buy new and this often involves creative scavenging*.

Along with the ring of trash there are also the overwhelming number of abandoned factory and apartment buildings. As the title of the post suggests, I think something should be done to utilize (recycle and reuse) all of this unused space. In my early teens I went with my church to Yonkers, New York on a two week mission trip to help reclaim abandoned homes and turn them into affordable housing. The program was called S.W.A.P. (Stop Wasting Abandoned Property) and it was created and run by a local Presbyterian pastor. What little funding they had came from donations. They were able to stretch that funding with recycled and reused materials. After experiencing what can be done with a little pride and inventiveness, I have to ask myself why we're building new (suburban sprawl) when we could be rebuilding.

Granted, a good deal of these abandoned properties are in low income, high crime areas that most suburbanites try to avoid (I'm sure we could all hypothisize why there is this divide). I believe that when cultural and ethnic diversity is embraced, it makes the community stronger. When I volunteered for SWAP, even as a teenager, I noticed how much a neighborhood could come to life when the people who live there have pride and purpose invested in where they live. So what if instead of building homes, an organization was developed to build gardens. I think it would be cool if each of these neighborhoods were to reclaim one of these buildings and turn it into a community garden. I'm sure this has already been done**, but what would it take to provide this opportunity to all communities?

Imagine if a community were to receive a grant to purchase a building, have is torn down, and turned into a community garden to replenish their local food cupboard (let's not forget that poor nutrition is also an issue in lower income neighborhoods). Many of these buildings are made of brick. The bricks could be used to make rows between the beds and stacked to make the actual raised beds. Then there is the ring of garbage to be utilized to make trellises, tomato cages, curing tables, work benches, bird baths, rain harvesters, and all kinds of other stuff.

There is no way Meg and I could run a project like this on our own, nor would we want to, but we are curious to know how we could get it started. If any of you have ever seen anything like this done and have some suggestions, please share. Thanks.

*Check out Patrick's post on the environmental benefits and hazards of the materials we choose to use or reuse in the garden. His post specifically targets PVC.

**I've actually been tossing this post draft around for a little while now and in the meantime read two posts that touch a bit on this subject. The first was from In the Toad's Garden and it talks about a mobile community garden. The second post is from Fast Grow the Weeds, which doesn't really talk about community reclamation (it's about saying enough to petty excuses and getting out there and doing something), but Ali from Henbogle (you've got to see her reclaimed sink) had a comment to the post that does point to some of the potential hazards of such a project.