Birthday Extravaganza

 Sunny Peppers!

Yes, the peppers continue to ripen and survive despite cold nights.  It's amazing what a sheet of remay row cover can do to preserve and protect.  I'm not sure about this week with lows forecast in the mid 20's it could be the end, but it's been a great run.  We have loads of peppers now that I need to cut up for the freezer because I don't think we will be able to eat them all up.

I've had a wonderful birthday week with multiple celebrations in honor of turning, as someone said "double nickles".  There have been cards and calls, gifts and dinners and a general festive air all around.

I baked this gorgeous snapper from the local fishmonger on my birthday eve. Along side crispy roasted potatoes, the last of the garden beans and a salad of just picked red bibb lettuce, a nice french white Bordeaux, that was some living brother.  And we polished the night off with a flour-less chocolate torte that I baked for myself as I'd been having a hankering.

On my actual birthday Nov 8th, David went out to Prairie Ridge with me to help band birds. It was another cool sunny day and we had a big time capturing kinglets and many sparrows in the nets and putting the bands on their tiny legs before measuring, weighing and releasing them to fly on about their day.

That night we enjoyed a super dinner at Mateo Tapas Bar in Durham where we sampled 9 different plates and a fair amount of wine.

Yesterday I spent the day at the NC Community Garden Partners Annual meeting.  I am on the education committee and so was on the planning committee for this event.  I think it was a big success, we had over 100 people from across the state taking part in workshops and presentations.  People seemed to be learning lots and networking too, always good.  Our theme this year was sustainability of gardens, not on the ecological level but on the management, business, funding, longevity level. It is great to see the community garden movement growing in North Carolina and so many people interested in getting gardens started and in keeping them going strong.

Best of all- I won the raffle of this gorgeous community garden quilt!  It represents raised beds, pathways and veggies growing, and has a few chickens clucking through it as well.  Colorful and fun.  I couldn't believe it.

And so, I enter my 55th year feeling very celebrated, loved and lucky indeed.

It's Official

You might remember me saying one of my goals for 2013 was to complete my environmental educators certification.  And I did, actually back at the beginning of March, I finally finished, that means I completed 200 hours of classes, teaching and community service projects and finally, today, my documents arrived in the mail.  I'm kinda tickled about getting this done after 4 years of working on it, not sure what it will do for me exactly, but the experience did give me lots of great ideas for teaching EE and the opportunity to meet  many interesting and dedicated folks in the EE field. And there is that sense of accomplishment which isn't a bad thing when you're scattered in as many directions as I often am.

Some other highlights of the week:

• Baby bluebirds continue to chatter in the nest, I expect to see them fledge any day now
• Peas are blooming and there are tiny pods forming
• Peonies are in full bloom as a result of the high temperatures that finally came BOOM, from 70 on Tuesday to 90 today.
• Potatoes are blooming which means taters are forming under ground 
• Strawberries are coming in ripe and sweet
• And finally, another thing that's official.  I removed the last vestiges of the community garden from the Duke Energy site on James Street, a sad scene for me to see it end, but also, it was time and I'm very glad to be done with that project which was hard emotionally and physically.  Now I can concentrate 100% on the one community garden I am still managing. 

You know I can't help gushing about the peonies, so here are a couple of reasons why:

• the flowers and foliage are large and lush
• the petals are silky
• the fragrance can be spectacular; ginger, rose and citrus, all rolled into one
• the colors and flower variations are many

Gaze upon these and be a believer

Looks like a horseshoe wreath of flowers

Bowl of Beauty

Need I say more?  I wish you a good night!

Growing Community Gardens- "KALE Yeah"

Given it's election day and I don't really want to think about the possibilities of how wrong it could all turn out, I've been avoiding the news all day and trying to distract myself with cooking and other chores.  That said- I feel it would be good to do a post about something really positive that I was involved in recently.

 Hopes and dreams of community garden organizers

Dozens of flip chart pages surrounded our group two weeks ago at Walnut Hall in Tanglewood Park.  I was pleased to help co-facilitate an exciting and action packed training workshop in Winston-Salem where 50 community garden leaders from across North Carolina came together to learn and practice information and training workshops as a part of the Growing Communities curriculum produced by the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA).  It was a tremendous couple of days that I had been working on pulling together for a year with a group of folks from the NC Community Garden Partners.  The planning committee raised money to give 10 scholarships and offer the workshop at a very low rate.  Thanks to many generous folks including NC and A&T State Universities' Cooperative Extensions, Forsyth Farm Bureau, Carolina Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) and Take Step Two of Pitt County among others.

People came from all kinds of gardening projects; some run by churches and food pantries to help feed the hungry, others from school-based gardens, traditional allotment style gardens, senior center and public housing sites.  Some folks were seasoned, others very new to the world of community gardening.  A key lesson is helping people to understand it's not enough to build some beds, put up a fence and find a water source.  You have to build a community group strategically and carefully in order for the garden to really succeed.  It is recommended that at least 10 committed people are ready to come to the table before even beginning to organize a community garden.  Half of those will probably drop out or fade away over time and the people with a "fire in the belly" are the key to long term success.

We worked intensively for 2 solid days and I think the folks were really energized and inspired to get back home and put the learning into practice.  The goal of the Growing Communities training is to teach gardeners how to be better organizers. It is often said that community gardens fail not because people can't grow beautiful tomatoes, but because they are poorly organized.  And as a person that has been trying to make 3 community gardens successful for about 5 years now with mixed results, I can say this is very true.  This was the second time I had attended this training and I carried back lots of new ideas and reminders of old knowledge too. All will help me continue my work of making the Growing Healthy Kids gardens with which I work more successful, more community driven, community run and organized entities.

One of the strategies of the training is to throw the participants together into small groups where they are  charged with developing an 85 minute presentation on a garden organizing topic to be presented the following afternoon. Not only do they have to do this with a group of strangers, they have to familiarize themselves with the educational info and workshop materials of the Growing Communities training manual in a very short time frame.  People really came through and in the session on Communications and PR we were left with the rallying cry "Community Gardens- KALE Yeah!!"

Nuff said.

Taxes finished- now I can fully enjoy the season

Dear friends-
Apologies once again for the long dry spell.  It's spring, what more can I say?  I just finished my taxes, phew, another year I managed to sort them out by myself with the help of Turbo Tax. Self-employment has some downsides, not the least of which is paying all 14% of your own social security, hopefully I'll actually get to collect back on that one day.

The past month has been filled with gardening both home and in town.  In the past few weeks I've enrolled about 15 new families bringing the total number of families in the three community gardens up to around 40.  I've only got a few plots left which is great.   It's the time of year when everyone is excited, the gardens are looking tidy and the new spring veggies are growing fast and green.  Hopefully the enthusiasm will continue,  there are always folks that flake out when it starts to get hot.

 On the home front- just a few highlights from the last few weeks:

New growth and cones on the evergreens, I roam around petting and fondling the tender tips

Weeping redbud Traveler.   My friend Michele says 

"Don't you want to sit and stare at that for about 8 hours and see how it changes you?"

If only I could find a spare 8 hours...

Apple trees in bloom, fortunately ours did not get nipped by the late frost last week

Pollen on the pond like marbled paper or chunky aggregate granite.  It's been so thick for weeks you could chew the air and everyone's complaining of scratchy throats, snotty noses, runny eyes and dusty houses.

Heavy rains in early April allowed the giant carp to swim up stream to spawn for the first time in several years.  Once their work is done, they die and become food for the critters.

Pinkster Azaleas in bloom.  They are finished now, the mountain laurel will be next...

That was just a taste really.  Been eating piles of asparagus, fresh baby green salads, radishes, finishing off the collards and kale from the winter, working away at last years storage crops, sweet potatoes, garlic, frozen tomato sauce and black-eyed peas, strawberries frozen and now fresh.

There have been lots of snakes of all kinds, new turtles come to court Gertrude, lizards galore and two gray tree frogs have taken up residence in the rain barrel.  They look like soft putty slapped down on the rim of the gray trash can, I can't put the lid on tight for fear of crushing them.

The lilac and dianthes are in bloom and their heavenly scents waft around the garden and into the open windows, rafts of blue and purple columbines adorn the front walkway with splashes of white daisies among them and dots of bright orange poppies scattered through.  The roses and peonies are about to put on the best show of our spring season.  I'll do my best to post some photos.

Now that the weather has settled down and nights are above 50 degrees for the most part, this coming week will be time to start planting the summer garden; tomatoes, beans, squash and cukes.  Once that is done, maybe we can slow down, but there is still lots of weeding, mulching and plant rearranging to be done...

Still February

 I love the red of the bare branches of this coral barked maple when its wet

After that last post, winter reared its head ever so briefly.  We had a dusting of snow a week or so ago, maybe an inch but it was melted by mid day.  Today is cold and rainy, I'm glad I don't have to be out in it.  I had planned to plant spinach and beets but they'll have to wait for another day when the sun comes back out and dries the ground up a bit.  I did manage to plant 180 onions last week, 40 red, 40 white and 100 yellow.  We ate the last onion from last years crop this week.  I would plant more but without a cold cellar I just don't think they would keep much past this time without sprouting and starting to rot.  It's a great investment when there is a good crop; $20 for the plants, about 4 hours of back bending to plant them, some weeding and watering yielded 80 pounds last year.  Last week when I bought the first onions in 8 months they were $4 for 3 pounds- that's $240 that we grew ourselves last year, a pretty good return I'd say.  David got the peas and first planting of lettuce, radish and carrots in last week too and a few pounds of potatoes wait in their paper sacks to go into the ground soon.

 

The onions in their neat rows.  Bright green in the center right are shallots planted in January

I've been working my tail off trying to get the community gardens up and running for the season.  Calling gardeners to organize meetings and work days, enrolling new families to fill vacant plots, sorting through last years seeds to figure out what's still viable and what I need to order for the coming season.  I've been organizing students from UNC to help out in the face of no staff this year because of budget cuts.  I'm the solo employee at this point, queen bee for all three gardens and the 45 families that will fill them in the next few months.  My office is a disaster; boxes of seeds, gardening handouts and planting charts, enrollment forms and garden agreements spread across the floor. I've been writing grants too, all in my 20 hour a week allotted time!  Sure feels like I'm working more than that, but I don't count the hours I spend thinking about it all, or worrying and losing sleep at night either...

Yesterday I held the first in a series of monthly veggie gardening basics classes that I'll be offering this year.  The day was a big success, 15 people came to my class in English and another 14 showed up to hear the same spiel in Spanish.  That was a challenge for me but I think I held my own, managing to make myself understood and only grappling for the right word a few times.  Everyone seemed interested and left excited to go home or into their community garden plot and plant some seeds.  And we raised $170 for the community gardens in donations from the participants.  Every little bit helps now that the grant funds have almost run out.

I'm ready for spring to come on now, it's been a challenging month feeling like spring but knowing by the calendar that its not yet time, having to hold back.  This week I'll set up the grow light in the corner of the bedroom and sow my flats with tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds to grow up and set out in mid-April.  Spring really is just around the corner.

A fancy hellebore struts her stuff

Spring is around the corner

MIA once again- it's been a very busy few weeks since my return from the coast.  Work is picking up steam with spring fast approaching so I've been busy with preparations for the fourth season of the Growing Healthy Kids garden project.  We have our first big organizational and planning meeting this afternoon with about 25 returning families and a few new folks, it will be a room filled with kids, parents and hopefully lots of energy to plan our upcoming workshops and workdays.

Last weekend I had the good fortune to attend a Growing Communities workshop in Charlottesville, Virginia sponsored by the American Community Gardening Association.  An action packed 2 days learning tools and techniques for organizing communities around the development of community gardens.  A fantastic group of diverse folks were there, many from Charlottesville but also California, New York and New Jersey!  I got a ton of great ideas for doing more leadership development with our garden families as well as ideas for spearheading more community garden work overall in the Chapel Hill area, it was inspiring.

I stopped into Roanoke to visit my friend Carol on the way home and we had a big time dining at a place called Local Roots, specializing- you guessed it- in local ingredients.  I enjoyed a slice of head cheese topped with a sunny side up egg as an appetizer and brook trout with parsnips, potatoes, kale and bacon for my entree, oooh yummm.  Sunday morning was cool and clear and we walked for about three hours around the Roankoke reservoir, birdwatching and sharing each others company.  Pileated and red headed woodpeckers were our companions as we wandered through the hardwood forest. 

I wound my way home starting with a section of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the views were spectacular and it was a slow journey as I kept stopping to take in the view. 

On the tail end of winter this is a recent scene from the dining table.  We've been making lots of slaw and raw veggie type salads, this version had grated raw beets and carrots, green cabbage and fennel, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice; crunchy, colorful and tasty.  We served the salad along side a taco of sweet potatoes and zucchini sauteed with onions, chile powder and cumin, topped with sour cream.  The stack includes a seed catalog, mushroom catalog, and a book I found at the library on cooking with winter vegetables.  I think I read 8 slaw recipes alone!  It's got loads of good ideas for using roots.

This week is promising to bring some very spring like weather at last.  Warm and sunny days are in the forecast so I'm hoping to get into my own garden for a few hours.  It's time to prepare beds for the 180  onion plants and 5 dozen leek plants I am expecting delivery on next week and also it is pea planting time! 

The sun is currently shining so I am going to close this post and head out into the day to enjoy a bit of it before the big meeting this afternoon.

American Community Gardening Association Annual Meeting

Diving for free seeds, thanks Ferry-Morse

I got back last night exhausted but enthused after 4 days at the ACGA annual meeting in Atlanta. I traveled with my co-worker and garden manager Kelly O. This was my first foray into a meeting of this organization and I was majorly impressed. The title of this years conference was A Holistic Approach to Building Sustainable and Healthy Communities, the Choice is Yours. Not only was the content of the sessions excellent, but the extracurricular activities were outstanding including a visit to the Atlanta Botanical Garden and a throw down at the Atlanta Metro Urban Farm, an effort recently undertaken by the president of ACGA, Bobby Wilson along with other community garden and food security folks in Atlanta. The event was sponsored by Whole Foods Market, and featured:

 a pit cooked whole hog, collards and black-eyed peas,

roasted sweet potatoes,

and a low country boil of potatoes, corn, crab and sausage. Banana pudding rounded out the meal washed down by lots of wine from Robert Mondavi and the whole night was made complete with a killer blues band, led by fourth generation bluesman Tony Bryant. OOOO, OO, OO, OOWEE!


But seriously, I came back super inspired by the work that is going on all across the country, and the world for that matter, to bring people back to the land, to provide opportunities for people to grow their own fresh food on public and private lands. Many efforts are underway to provide assistance to the homeless and people who are visiting local food banks and pantries to get access to fresh produce. If you have ever visited a food bank you know that everything is usually in cans and boxes because they don’t have capacity to deal with lots of perishables.

When I have volunteered at our local Inter-Faith Council Food Pantry here in Carrboro I’ve been saddened to only have the occasional fresh potato, onion or bell pepper to offer to the families coming in, fresh foods are a luxury to the poor, and often completely unavailable to people who live in what has been termed “food deserts” places in rural and urban areas that have no decent grocery stores for miles. The only option many families have is the local package store or quickie mart to buy groceries to try and feed the family and the result is the obesity epidemic that we are now dealing with in our country that affects the poor more than other groups. It’s a crazy oxymoronic situation of overweight in the face of food scarcity thanks to the availability of high carbohydrate foods loaded with corn syrup that fill up hungry people but don’t provide nutrition.

But don’t get me started on that. Tours were offered to visit community gardens all over the city. My tour featured four gardens that were organized by various refugee relief organizations and I got to meet people from many places, proud of their gardens.

Ladies from Bhutan

Gentleman from Somalia

I recognized the vegetables grown by the people of Burma that have become familiar to me in our gardens, and saw a small farm that’s working to teach growing and marketing skills among a group of men and women from Burundi, Africa. What a wonderful thing to make land available to people who have been torn from there traditional roots via wars and famine and permit them an opportunity to reconnect to the soil and grow crops that can remind them of home.

Needless to say, we came back tired but excited and filled with ideas about how to make our community gardens better and how to work to advocate for more community gardens in NC. I want to challenge anyone reading this to consider making a contribution to or becoming a member of ACGA- its only $30 for an individual membership- in order to help promote this important work that’s feeding people and creating sustainability across our troubled country. I also encourage folks to get involved in your local food and sustainability movements wherever you are to help improve the health, nutrition and quality of life of all of our neighbors, not just those who can afford the high price that going local sometimes brings.

Still snow on the ground

It's incredible to me that we still have snow on the ground after 8 days.  I feel grateful that we didn't get hit with the huge storm that landed further north the last few days, knocking out power and leaving folks buried.  We have had a tremendous amount of rain.  The creeks are all really high and the ground is soaked.  I think getting peas planted this month may be a real challenge if we don't see some warmer, drier weather in the next couple of weeks. There is sun in the forecast but still below normal temps for the next week.

I also can't believe its been a week since I've blogged but I've been very busy with work, despite the weather, making plans and getting things in place for the Growing Healthy Kids community garden to hit the ground running as soon as the weather does warm up.  I'm excited about our gardens this year, we've expanded one garden and will be recruiting new families so that we may have as many as 50 families during the growing season.

I've got two fascintating photos to share from the snow week.  While out walking last week when there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground, we spied the tail of a snake sticking out from under the snow on the edge of the trail.  Seemed strange and not a good situation for the snake as it was getting dark and cold.  David dug a hole down into the leaves near by and off the trail and dug the snake up and moved it down closer to the earth and covered it back up.  Don't know what kind of snake it was, it was alive, but moving slowly.  Randy- if you're reading this- do you know?  It had a pale green belly.

On the same hike we also spotted this ice formation in the creek that looked just like a pear!

The sun is out today and though its chilly, I'm planning a nice long walk as its been cold and rainy since Thursday and I'm ready to get back outside.

Good ol' Greens

This coming week I want to feature greens.  Here's fat crisp Bok Choy, ready to get washed and sliced into a stir fry.  The seed for a lot of my greens didn't germinate well so we've only got a few heads of this and that but all together there will be enough.  I like to grow a little of a lot of things so that I have good variety but don't use up too much space or have to deal with a lot of extra.  Especially at this time of year when I'm ready to slow down in the garden but still want to have fresh food.

We had a big work day at one of our community gardens today, it's so much nicer to tackle large jobs with lots of people.  A number of students came out from the university along with some other community volunteers and a few of our existing gardeners.  We raked a new area that was recently tilled and removed grass roots, rocks and tree roots and then sowed it all with clover to help build the soil and choke out any weeds.  In the spring we'll till it under and create 15 new plots for 15 new families!