Monday, December 7, 2009

Harvest Review

I have strayed from this blog by not contributing to it, by banking on nobody reading it, and all-in-all forgetting that I even started it. Since it started with a focus on urban farming, I’ll return to that topic and just give a run down on the summer of 2009. At this moment the temperature outside is hovering at around zero degrees Fahrenheit, so thinking about summer should be therapeutic.

The summer of 2009 gave us more precipitation than that of 2008, which was a great gift. Temperatures never rose as high as 100°, and as I recall only exceeded 90° a handful of times. Consequently, tomatoes and peppers were slow to ripen, but we had exceedingly great raspberries, strawberries, and corn. Potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, cucumbers, tomatillos, cabbages, beans, peas and kale were great. I planted some old packs of shell-beans in a space vacated by beets on the 4th of July. I am not exaggerating when I say the beans were at least 15 years old, and they were of 2 or 3 types. In about 15 linear feet of beans I harvested about 2/3 of a gallon of shell beans. Our sweet potatoes were a bust, maybe because of the heat issue. Our grapes were also not as prolific as usual, possibly due to the heat, or maybe an overly late pruning job. Next time I'll say what produce we preserved for later use. Next year I resolved to plant more potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots.

Not bad for city folks...

Friday, September 25, 2009

Wiping Up With the Poor

I learned last night about the action of a local nonprofit director. The organization, Senior Support Services, assists seniors (over the age of 55) living in poverty--in particular those who are homeless. Funding to Sr. Support Services from the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) was completely cut. According to Sr. Support Services' director Ted Pascoe's blog, the organization was cut because they had not successfully filed electronic records, which they believed they had filed, and which were successfully filed after they learned they were not properly registered.
Like many government entities, DRCOG had a 13% cut in funds. Naturally, rather than evaluate ways to make cuts at every level, the most vulnerable pay. I noticed a job opening today at Senior Support which pays more than the entire budget at Senior Support. What if "everyone" gave a little bit?
Rush Limbaugh was interviewed on Jay Leno last night. In the portion of the interview that I witnessed, Limbaugh finds nothing wrong with insurance executives who make billions upon billions of profits while others suffer. He offered no answer to Leno's question about the needy among us. He seems to summon no moral outrage that people are legitimately needy: the sick, the poor, the elderly, the children. The audacity of a person to have a need! They should have capitalized on the pain of others and then they wouldn't be in this bind!
In an effort to make up for huge budget shortfalls ($1.3 billion combined shortfall for the fiscal year 2009-10 and 2010-11 budgets), Colorado's governor painfully cut Aid to the Needy Disabled (AND) which is the money allotted by the state to indigent persons who are unable to work. This amount is only $200 per month and is repaid to the state when the persons receive Social Security Supplemental Disability (SSI/SSDI), a process that can take years. I remember as far back as 1991, AND was $219 a month, and at that time could house an individual in low-rent market housing. Now it can only house someone in available subsidized housing, but this still leaves money to pay for utilities, transportation, and essential items (such as toilet paper). Starting Jan. 1 it will be $0.
The governor said people receiving AND waste the money. How can that be said about a sick person who lives on $6.66 per day? With all due respect, does the governor really believe these are the people who are wasting public money?
I'm glad Ted Pascoe is camping out--his blog reveals that he struggles the same way someone camping does, in terms of trying to find an invisible spot where a person can get some rest. I'm glad that he opted not to take a needed floor or mat space from someone residing in a shelter, because they remain full. Otherwise why would 90 men a night line up for the privilege to sleep on top of each other in flu season, in a place like the Samaritan house overflow?
But that's another subject...
I'm grateful there are still plenty of people who do not blame the poor for this social mess we're in.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I still feel hesitant about putting thoughts into the blogosphere--therefore I'm keeping everything is ubber private: no tags, anonymous links to other blogs, etc. I discovered a new gardening enterprise called Heirloom Gardens. I loved the before and after pictures, as people's useless lawns were transformed into edible landscapes. It seems like a gardening project being done by people who are just diving in for the first time, holding only wonder and hope--quite inspiring.
At this point in our garden, the corn looks like it will be knee-high by the 4th of July (mostly), I believe garlic will be ready for harvest soon (yay!), the new kale I planted is up and the heirloom red spinach that I planted as an afterthought. With the temps approaching 100, the tomatoes aren't complaining, and we have tomatillo blossoms earlier than I can ever recall. Looks like a bumper crop. Raspberries and strawberries are cheering from bee-action.
A picture's worth 1000 words.



Here's a picture of our potatoes (beets to the right, raspberries on the left)

Garlic!

Strawberries!
Tomato patch

Friday, April 17, 2009

The guy who sells me my milk and eggs was agitated when I popped in Tuesday April 14. He had just talked with the person who does his taxes and was incredulous that he owed money. "This is the least I have ever made and I have to PAY?!?!" He said he had claimed 3 exemptions so that he could make his house payment. He raged for awhile about the death of the middle class. Don should be the middle class, gosh darn it. He wears his overhauls and goes to work every day and does his job. Yet he makes so little that claiming 3 exemptions on his taxes makes the difference between paying and not. He didn't have the money to pay it.
But on the news the same day I heard how as soon as Merrill Lynch received $10 billion from the Treasury Department’s Capital Purchase Program (CPP) they issued $3.6 billion ($3,600,000,000) in stockbroker bonuses from their bankrupt company.
It's easy to understand why there is skepticism at the roots.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

dying


Ann and Herb each turn 50 this week. Ann is my "oldest friend"--meaning not that she is old in years but she is the only peer I can think of who has known me my whole life. We both appreciate this.
Herb wanted to tie-dye, and dye we did.
Another peer died earlier this year from cancer. We had lost touch with each other over the years, but I was able to attend her celebration of life held shortly before she passed away. Her widower stopped by this week spontaneously and we visited for a long time, about plants, how he was doing, his kids. At Linda's pre-death celebration, she showed a video of a trip to Las Vegas. A fountain there erupts to music every hour, and while they were there in the fall, they filmed this fountain surging to "Time to Say Goodbye" by Andrea Bocceli. It was so beautiful I had a whole different sense of what could be good about Las Vegas.
Any one of us could die at any moment, or lose someone we love. It's always the right time to tell someone we care. Every minute of life is precious. Live with appreciation for another day.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Craig's-list: shopping at its best

Someone at work asked me the other day, “Do you ever do that craig’s-list thing?”

Well of course. I have procured 2 washing machines (the first one I gave away after using for a few years and upgrading to a front-loader), an evaporative cooler, and a deep freezer. I have bought one car and sold two, (the car I bought was one of the cars I sold.) I sold a computer printer and gave away a monitor. I have picked up free furniture for homeless people resettling, bicycles for the local bike cooperative, topsoil, rocks, and leaves for compost. I sold Great Aunt Mary’s ladylike wicker chairs and bought a wheelbarrow. I purchased original garden art and given away children’s toys. I have searched for housing and dates for friends. I sought and found potential rides to the Midwest.

Somewhere someone is abusing craig’s-list. Somewhere there are psycho killers who stalk people via this medium. But my experience is that it brings the small-town right to the convenience of the internet. It’s like “Louie’s Swap Shop” on Saturday mornings on KOKO radio in Warrensburg Missouri. It’s like going to a yard sale without using so much gas to get there. The people you meet this way are just like people you meet in any public venue.

Have I "done" craig’s-list? What did we do without it?

Growing Colorado


Last night we ate fresh spinach and arugula salad from our yard. The chili we served contained last year's tomatoes and green peppers. Naturally the pumpkin pie we had for desert had our own produce in it too. Every time we feed ourselves directly from the garden in this manner one can only feel gratitude for gifts from the earth.

A few weeks ago "Growing Colorado"came again to evaluate our front yard space for their own garden. This organization will do Community Supported Agriculture in donors' soil. We had corn planted in our front yard last year, but had spoken of planting less garden this summer. The project will do garden education with children, and provide donor homes with a box of produce every week. The rest they will market, as they did last summer from a different single location. The kids who were here were from Somalia. The girls wore hijab, Muslim head coverings for women. In their country of origin women are the farmers. One of their mothers says, men reign in other settings, but in the growing of food, the women are in charge. GC will use our yard space for summer crops, namely tomatoes and squash, and will look forward to beginning in May.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Kevin wants to go to college



I just visited Kevin this morning. He had a gash on his forehead from where he fell down the stairs into his apartment a few days ago. He had a seizure. “I always fall on the back of my head” but he couldn’t work that out under the circumstances, and there was no carpet on the floor. While I was there we thought of, and I wrote on a piece of paper which I stuck to his refrigerator, reasons he might quit drinking. (He says he started again because he got bored.)
College is his number one reason.
Kevin inspired me to sign up for college a few years ago (I’m graduating in a month.) He said then that he was going to sign up for Spanish. I thought, “if Kevin can do it I can too.” Not long after that he fell off the wagon.
So he still wants to go to college. Now he wants to study Sociology. When he says this he is dead-on serious. But like many drunks it does not account for the fact that really all he can do when he’s drinking is recover from the last drink and plan for the next one. His body suffers: partly because he has Hepatitis C and partly because he’s been hit on the head so many times he has a seizure disorder. If he weren’t drinking he could take seizure medication which would moderate his seizures. Plus he wouldn’t have the nasty problem of those seizures he gets when he’s deprived of alcohol.
I got him to say, "I don’t want to live in the past—I want to live for the future.” Yesterday I heard my spiritual adviser say , “The ego lives out of the past. The soul is looking to the future.” Ours was a good visit.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Finally it snowed

Here's a picture from Friday morning, March 27.




And here's a picture from Wednesday, right before.

We're so grateful for the snow, and especially the moisture. March is supposed to be Denver's wettest month, but until yesterday we had not had one drop.
FEBRUARY 2009 BECAME DENVER'S LEAST SNOWIEST FEBRUARY SINCE SNOWFALL RECORDS
BEGAN IN 1882. ONLY A TRACE (LESS THAN 0.1 INCH) WAS RECORDED NEAR THE
DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.
"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming… and now as a sign of climate change, the canary has died." Dec. 2007, Dr Jay Zwally is a glaciologist employed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Lilli impromptu interpretive dance


Test test.
First time blogger. Posting picture of Lilli and "interpretive movement" from February 28. The 2 minute movie taking forever to upload, so I stopped it and put in a photo of Lilli standing by her bedroom door. Boring, so I tried another movie, this time a 9 second basketball movie. HEY IT WORKED!

So this is what a blog looks like. Some blogs are about important activiteis of daily living.
The pace flag is standing at attention to the north wind, and several inches of snow have fallen this morning. The first moisture received for 2009, with March (our month of greatest precipitation) having only 5 more days we had become a little worried.