Genius Upcycling

On one of my walks to the forest preserve, I pass by a house I love. It is what appears to be a really nice prairie style rehab of an old house. It's gardens are fantastic. I should post a photo so I can remember them in the dead of winter. At the sidewalk entry to this house are two planting urns, and the homeowener uses wine bottles as a self-watering tool. I personally love the aesthetic and it seems to work reasonably well, depending on the amount of water in the soil. I'm not sure I'd leave my plants unattended for a week with one, but as a stopgap to my forgetfulness, I rather like it. And, best of all, it's free!

Quote: "Isn't growth for the sake of growth the philosophy of cancer?"

- John Langerak, Chester, ME as quoted in Scientific American, August 2010

Garden Gossip: What I (tried to) grow in the summer of 2010

My mentor once told me that she didn't need to remember anything she can look up.  I'm not sure that's entirely accurate because a lot of what I do involves thinking on my feet.  But with the advent of blogs, looking things up has become so much easier.  So, because I am like my mentor and have a hard time remembering specific details, I am veering off of the sustainability course a bit to discuss wine and gardening, two things I love.

Stories for my Grandchildren

What stories would you like your great grandchildren to know about you someday? 

i was recently asked this question on an essay application i submitted.  i think it speaks to my viewpoint on environmentalism and how vital it is to our survival.

I am an environmentalist because I’ve always felt at home in natural environments and destroying beauty is a tragedy.  Environmental catastrophes such as the Gulf oil spill bring to the forefront of my mind that our society of rampant consumption and short-term gratification cannot sustain itself.  I hope future generations know I was a woman who loved her family fiercely and worked to make the world a better place for them.  I would like the legacy I leave to be one where I worked with a network of like-minded individuals and groups to inspire others to make the hard changes that will be necessary to sustain our species.  I would like to succeed in that goal by working hard, continually learning and drawing inspiration from nature, and teaching others to work together to improve the world.  My grandfather always told his family to “live, learn, and pass it on.”  I hope they say that I fulfilled his wish.

Garden Gossip: 4th week in July

The garden is in full swing now. We are eating all of the greenbeans that the rabbit chooses to ignore. We had our first cherry tomatoes a few days ago. We are growing a hybrid sweet orange variety from Stokes. It is TMV F (Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Fusarium wilt) resistant, which is important to me because I've lost whole seasons to nematodes in the past. They are bushy and crazy wild, though. We left for a long weekend and returned to find that one of the plants had overturned it's cage! The bunny is still around. I won't be able to get rid of it until I put up the chicken wire fence in the fall.

My greatest pleasure with the garden isn't eating the food myself but watching my 3 year old daughter pick and eat the cherry tomatoes right off the organic vine. I grew them for her.

Gods, I love summer in Chicago.
Amy

Quote: "have they no grandchildren?"

Excerpt from Tom Friedman's Op Ed in the NYT today:

"The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: 'Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible 'conspiracy theory': the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: "Have they no grandchildren?"

Suburban Backyard Garden

When we decided to move to the Chicago area from New York, we chose a suburb with great schools for our two little kids. We chose this house for its walkable, downtown location but also for its south facing back yard. After years of container gardening, I was looking forward to growing food in a large, ground-based location.

The yard had "great bones" when we purchased it - a large maple shade tree centered on the back door and medium sized bushes planted by the previous owner. We added the fence to create a safe place for the kids to play. We removed about one-third of the backyard grass in favor of a french style square foot garden, a cedar playhouse, and garden beds to surround the minimized turf. The garden itself is approximately 150sf of annual beds, 200 sf of perennial herbs, 50 sf of berry bushes, and ample space for decorative flowers and trees and bushes for privacy.