Another Rainy Day

And I had a day off to play outside in my own garden, shoot!
Yes, I say "shoot", I wonder where that came from?
Shoots are good things in the garden, unless they're weeds.

Anyway, it's another rainy day, and I shouldn't whine. The weather bureau says our through-April cumulative snowfall for the winter was 2 tenths of an inch short of a record which was good. The ground and the trees need recharging.
But here with my tuna can measure I've accumulated under half an inch of rain this past several weeks when we should normally have collected at least a good inch a week.
The spring flowers have been tremendous, but the leaves of the trees could use a good rainy boost right now while they're expanding.
By the way, we had our first hearty salad meal last night, the few lettuces that overwintered in my cold frame are huge, sweet and succulent, and it felt so good to bring in a bowlful of home-grown leaves! And the baby lettuces are growing so prettily for summer salads.

So I'm indoors and maybe this would be a good time to talk a little about the Home Street garden project, of which I'm a volunteer gardener along with my gardening friend Sharron, some Master Gardeners, some Applewood volunteers, and some Land Bank people.

A few weeks ago four of us canvassed the neighborhood - I think we passed out seventy or so invitations - going door to door to reintroduce ourselves to the neighbors. Unfortunately the people we talked to the longest were unable to come to our meeting for health and scheduling reasons. But we did have some good conversations. Seven of us met at the church on the corner, the minister there is welcoming and willing to work with bringing out some of his people. If all goes as discussed, we will have a foothold in the community now.

We made a calendar, but Sharron and I showed up last week to pull weeds for a couple of hours before our first scheduled work day which was yesterday. We noted that the dead tree has toppled during the winter - part of it hit the roof of the vacant house next door. Someone needs to take care of that tree!

Yesterday five of us pulled most of the straw off of the beds and did some weeding and edging and cleaning up. We have a full lawn bag with winter accumulated trash - bottles, glass, food wrappers and so on. The used straw was going in the composting corner - somebody needs to build some bins!

I had to talk to convince Phil to keep the straw on a bed a la Ruth Stout. I read her "How To Have A Green Thumb Without Having An Aching Back" and all that straw on the compost beds being piled in the corner for future composting could just as easily be left in place for mulch to supress weeds and keep the moisture from disappearing. Only weeders and waterers would choose 'beauty' over utility, and for my gardener's eye, a well mulched garden looks healthy and beautiful.

Sharron had the idea to make a new straw-only bed near the Home Street sidewalk and plant sweet potatoes in it, which is a flash of inspiration. Why didn't we have sweet potatoes in the plan! Our new trainee volunteer, Nickie, was telling us about all the mouthwatering ways she uses sweet potatoes, and for me they are the embodiment of comfort food.

And our little depressed urban neighborhood surely needs some comfort. We hear gunfire occasionally while we're working, but I'm learning the folks there live with that as background noise, like the sound of cars and buses and smells of cooking.
A man was killed by gunfire on our block in early April, and while we were standing outside of the church after that first meeting, we had our first taste of immediate gun violence, a man on a truck was firing a handgun up the street while driving north on MLK Boulevard.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. What is this Beirut?
No, it is a depressed, forgotten neighborhood in the middle of the United States of America, a neighborhood with good people living there who tend their own yards and talk to us strangers, and who don't deserve these abandoned houses, and slum landlord owned rental properties, and the community decay that comes with powerlessness.
But I digress.

So we are ready for another truck load of compost to be dumped and wheelbarrowed in a couple of weeks.

Keeping Genesee County Beautiful Is a Great Idea

I just registered to attend the 2008 Keep Genesee County Beautiful's Annual Community Beautification Conference which will be Saturday, March 1 at the University of Michigan - Flint. I went last year and it was fun, so if you're local, please think of going too!

First, it's educational - you get to go to two workshops of your choice out of these possibilities: exploring community outdoor art ideas, a Q and A with a landscape designer, composting, grant writing for beautification mini-grants, learning to look for the positive, recycling, tree selection and planting, veggies, and volunteer recruitment. Last year I learned about volunteer recruitment and landscaping: this year I chose community art and more landscaping.

Networking. You will see a lot of local gardeners there as we all come out of hibernation to see if the sun is warming up our surroundings yet. Last year the Home Street urban veggie gardeners found each other to hang around together and I also saw a bunch of Master Gardener friends picking up some educational credits.

Let's see, what else would draw you to attend?
It's free, that's always a plus in my book.
There are informational displays from a lot of different organizations that have to do with beautification, conservation, environmentalism, gardening and community. There are goodies and freebies, pencils and refreshments and suchlike. Last year they had a nice KGCB carryall bag for all attendees, and the MGA had the free seed box (for community garden projects) there.

Last year Walker's Farm & Greenhouse gave away some excellent door prizes as well. I must say, now that I've mentioned Walkers Farm, how I have been impressed in the past year by all the support I've noticed they are providing to community beautification projects. Walkers is a family enterprise that's been in our neighborhood for as long as I can remember, and we always bought bedding plants, herbs, and healthy veggie starts there for our own garden. But now that I see them blooming as sustainers of our community it gives me a warm feeling to know they are my local greenhouse.

Genesee County: put the CSA introductory meeting on your calendar

The manager of the Flint Farmer's Market, Dick Ramsdell has been a key supporter and promoter of Community Supported Agriculture here in Genesee County. There is a great article on the front page of Monday's (Jan. 28) Flint Journal by Elizabeth Shaw entitled "Green Thumbs - Urban Agriculture in Full Bloom Here" (link) that discusses some of what is going on here in our area.

Want to learn about Community Supported Agriculture or how to join a CSA group with local farms? There's a free public meeting coming up:
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 5
Where: First Presbyterian Church, 746 S. Saginaw St., Flint.
Details: (810) 938-4246 or chsramsdell@hotmail.com

A few interesting local food factoids from the article
(Source: Food Bank Council of Michigan):

If every Michigan family bought just $10 per week of Michigan produce, it would keep $37 million a week or $1.9 billion a year from leaving the state.

Food now travels an average of 1,500 miles to get onto Michigan tables. (Think of the fuel burned!) 50 percent of trucks on interstate highways carry food.

A Michigan Land Use Institute study reports local buying could generate almost 2,000 new jobs and increase farm income as much as 16 percent.

a new gadget

I just added a new blogging gadget today that I found while surfing (or as we say in Michigan, sledding) the internet. Check out any links in the writing and a little snapshot of the linked page appears in a balloon, awesome! Hope it adds some fun to your reading. This snippet from the source, Snap Shots, explains how it works:

"Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.
Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out."

Also, while Googling blogs about Flint, Michigan, my hometown, this morning I found one I thoroughly enjoyed reading and will bookmark: Flint Expats, written from far away, beautiful San Francisco. I read a lot of blogs, and don't usually leave comments on them, but this one is so well done that I took a moment to leave a comment and got a reply! If you love Flint with all of it's scars and beauty, take a look at Flint Ex Pats.
I'm particularly thrilled to see some of my old favorite Flint spots discussed, photographs included, and there are plenty of intriguing links to explore.

Speaking of leaving comments... please do! It's nice to know someone out there is visiting.
And finally, this blog is now somewhere in the vast links list of Absolute Michigan, I think under hobbies (as I didn't easily find the gardening list.) I heart Michigan, and I intend to explore lots of Michigan blogs this winter. If I find one I particularly like I'll tell you!